Echoes of Remembrance
by LinariteLavanya
Summary: The last thing Peter remembers is being in Eichen House. But when he opens his eyes, he's definitely not there anymore. Instead, he's been abducted by the Wild Hunt and finds himself in a parallel dimension. And if that wasn't enough, he ends up rescued by a woman who seems to know him despite the fact that he's never seen her before in his life...at least not that he remembers.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Welcome to yet another OC-centric fanfic that began in my plot bunny field. XD Basically, this is a Teen Wolf Peter/OC fic that begins right around the start of Season 6 (aka the last season of Teen Wolf :'(, which just started airing a few weeks ago). It's basically going to be an AU fic, because while I'm excited to see what the show does with the Wild Hunt, I have ideas of my own for how things should go down. ...Also I wanted to have a Peter/OC fic, and what better time than when he's been erased from existence like Stiles? That being said, this fic will begin a bit before the actual proper start of Season 6, because Peter gets taken by the Wild Hunt before Stiles does, and the first chunk of this fic is going to be what's going on with Peter before Stiles shows up. Let's see, what else...ah, yes, alternativing viewpoints! Because that's a thing that I do. XD For now, it'll be Peter and Riley (the OC), but Stiles will get some bits from his POV once he shows up. In the meantime...Peter will probably come across as OOC, because...well, mostly just because. He will still be sassy, though, once we get past all this initial WTF mentality he's rocking at the start. XD_

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

Peter woke up feeling like he'd been bashed over the head and tossed down a very steep mountain.

After opening his eyes and blinking away the blurry shadows at the edges of his vision, he discovered that he was laying flat on his back and staring up at a gloomy overcast sky that seemed to consist of nondescript gray clouds for as far as the eye could see.

He sat up, cursed under his breath when doing so caused aches and pains all over his body to suddenly become noticeable (his werewolf healing eased the worst of it within minutes, but even so it was aggravating), and then cursed again when he saw that his immediate surroundings were just as nondescript and gloomy as the cloudy sky overhead.

Dull gray buildings along a seemingly deserted cobblestone road that disappeared into a peculiar fog bank several blocks away, that was all he saw. No cars, no animals, no people, no signs of life _at all_.

And wasn't that just incredibly fucking creepy.

It was unnerving even by Peter's standards, which (unsurprisingly given who and what he was) had a generous amount of leeway where such things were concerned.

This, though...this place felt _wrong_. Something about it was setting off all of his instincts, making the wolf under his skin incredibly uneasy.

The closest simile he could think of was when a person walked into a forest that _should_ have been full of chirping birds and chattering squirrels but instead had only tall forbidding trees and a cold dry wind. It was a bit like that in this strange place, had that unsettling feeling of unnatural stillness and emptiness, and yet somehow it was _worse_.

 _How did I even get here?_ Peter wondered, trying to recall whatever he'd been doing before ending up here, where the hell _here_ was.

He could vaguely remember Eichen House, the memories disjointed and hazy because of the outrageous drug cocktails they'd been shooting him up with, wolfsbane and ketamine and God only knew what else. He remembered Valack, the fucking freak with his third eye from Hell; Valack had, at some point during Peter's imprisonment, mysteriously never returned from a supposedly routine medical check-up, and Peter found himself desperately hoping that someone had finally found the good sense to off the freakish bastard.

How had Peter gotten out of Eichen House, though? Because unless he had finally and truly snapped and gone 'round the bend and was hallucinating all of this, this was definitely not the institution where he'd been held prisoner for the last...however many months it had been. Christ, he couldn't even _remember_ how long he'd been trapped there; what kinds of opioids had they given him, that he couldn't even count the days?

 _Okay, forget about that for now_ , he told himself sternly, trying to quell the wrath building in his chest at the mere thought of those orderlies manhandling him and jabbing needles into his skin. _Focus on the now_.

He decided that standing up would probably be a good start to figuring out what the fuck was going on, so he did that, looking around and hoping to spot something that looked at least a _little_ familiar.

He wasn't terribly surprised when noting familiar presented itself. No, life -especially his life- was never that easy. After a couple more minutes of wandering aimlessly around the cobblestone road, though, he finally saw something that piqued his interest.

At first glance it looked like just some sort of strange geometric graffiti, a spiral within a triangle, but upon closer inspection he discovered that it seemed to have been painted in blood.

It had long since dried, of course, and even dark and flaking at the edges of the symbols, the scent was unmistakable.

Curious, he reached out a hand.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," a woman's voice called out suddenly, the words startling after the maddening silence that had held reign over the area until now. "Unless you want to summon your own death."

He spun on his heel, hands flexing at his side as he scanned the area for who had spoken. It took a few seconds, but finally he could hear footsteps approaching, and a moment later the speaker came close enough for him to make out her features through the chilling fog that had somehow crept in closer without him noticing.

With short strawberry blonde hair and gray eyes, she somehow managed to exude an aura of don't-fuck-with-me despite being a few inches shorter than he was (and slender to boot). Or at least, she exuded that feeling _until_ she really saw him; then, her eyes widened with what almost seemed like recognition (impossible, because he couldn't remember having ever met this woman before in his life).

Her facial expression changed in a split second, though, smoothing from startled recognition to distant amusement; likewise, her heartbeat, which had gone jittery and jumpy upon seeing his face, had settled and steadied and was now thump-thumping along in a normal tempo. "Well, well, well," she said as she stopped walking towards him and tucked her hands into the pockets of her slightly scruffy capelet coat. "Peter Hale, as I live and breathe. You're certainly not someone I expected to see today, that's for sure."

Peter narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously at her tone of friendly familiarity; was she the one responsible for bringing him to...wherever the hell this was? "You know me," he stated flatly, not bothering to disguise the blatant wariness in his voice.

"I know you," she agreed, peering at him intently for a minute before her gaze dropped to where his claws had come out of his nail beds. "But you don't know me," she added softly, some sort of powerful emotion flickering through her eyes as her heart skipped a beat.

And Peter couldn't be entirely certain with the fog muddling up his senses, but he could have sworn that he caught the scent of grief coming from her, but before he could question it, the scent was gone, just as her heartbeat steadied out again.

The woman's gaze, meanwhile, flickered back up to his face. "Of course you don't know me," she said, shaking her head and giving a self-deprecating snort of laughter. "Why would you? The Wild Hunt is nothing if not thorough."

Peter just stared at her. "The Wild Hunt," he repeated, not quite willing to admit that he had no fucking clue what she was talking about; as far as he knew, the Wild Hunt was just some of European fairy story...wasn't it?

The woman gave a smile that didn't seem very happy. "Do you remember how you got here, Peter Hale?"

He lifted his lift in the barest hint of a snarl. "No," he said, trying not to sound too sullen about it. "I was severely drugged at the time," he added by way of explanation when the woman arched an eyebrow questioningly. "Ketamine and wolfsb-" He cut himself off before he could accidentally out himself.

Not that his attempt seemed to matter much in the end.

"And wolfsbane?" the woman finished for him, smirking now. "Relax, Peter; I already know that you're a werewolf."

This time he did snarl at her, at both her knowledge and the easy way she spoke to him, as if they actually knew each other. "How could you _possibly_ know that?"

She just gave a careless shrug. "Just do," she said simply. "Now," she went on, ignoring his glare, "weren't we discussing how you got here? I mean, I'm happy enough to continue this pointless little glare fight if that's what you really want because hey, whatever floats your boat, but surely someone as clever as you wants to know what the fuck is going on?"

Peter opened his mouth to snap at her again, then frowned; _whatever floats your boat_ , she'd said, and something about the _way_ she'd said it...it was strangely familiar, somehow, a bit like the chorus of a song he'd heard long ago but could only distantly recall.

Then there was the rest of her statement to consider, and he was forced to choose between his pride and his _need_ to know what he'd landed himself in this time. On one hand, he hated having to ask for something to be explained to him. On the other hand...

 _Oh, to hell with it_. "What the fuck is going on?" he asked, exasperated.

She gave a wide grin and actually clapped her hands together a couple times. "Happy you asked," she said, her tone just short of openly mocking. "To make a long story short, you've been abducted by the Wild Hunt and erased from existence. Also, welcome to _Tech na cinn Caillte_."

Peter blinked. "...What."

"Welcome to _Tech na cinn Caillte_ ," she repeated, looking torn between amusement and sympathy.

"Not _that_ ," he retorted irritably, not even willing to verbally touch whatever gibberish had just spouted from her mouth; it had sounded like an old Goidelic language...Gaelic, perhaps? _Oh, who cares._ "What did you say before that, about the Wild Hunt? What does that old story have to do with...this?" He waved his hands around to indicate the unnaturally empty street where they were standing.

The woman gave a slight sigh, all traces of amusement vanishing, to be replaced with pity, reluctance, and a sort of soul-deep weariness that made his chest tighten in trepidation. "The basic myth," she began, "is that there's a group of spectral huntsmen, riding steeds of the darkest black with eyes of burning fire. These hunters are a force of nature, practically unstoppable. They ride through the night, bringing storms with them, and they take people."

"Take people," Peter repeated, scowling now as his mind turned the concept over. "Take them where?"

"Here," she replied, spreading out her arms to indicate the eerie environment around them. " _Tech na cinn Caillte."_

"That's the third time you've said that," Peter said, rolling his eyes, "and still all I hear is you gargling rock salt."

To his surprise, the woman smiled, shaking her head with a wistful expression. "Peter Hale," she said, her tone strangely fond. "Still cheeky, I see. It means 'House of the Lost Ones'", she added in explanation to his unspoken question. "That's us, in case you're wondering," she went on, waving a hand vaguely between the two of them. "We're the Lost Ones. Us and the others."

"The others?" Peter asked. "What others?"

"The others taken by the Wild Hunt," she answered, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "We have a place that's safe from them, if you want to come. The Hunt probably won't come back to snatch anyone so soon after dumping you here, but better safe than sorry, you know?"

Peter did _not_ know; he had no fucking idea what was going on. At all. "Why would they snatch anyone from here?" he demanded, starting to get a headache from trying to keep all the nonsense straight in his mind (which was already under a bit of a strain from coming off of the numerous and varied drugs they'd had him on at Eichen House). "They're the ones who _brought_ us here, aren't they? So why would they take us _from_ the place they dumped us? That makes no sense."

"It makes sense if they need to make a sacrifice to whatever gods they're paying homage to," the woman replied, her tone very straightforward, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I don't know what their long-term plans are for the majority of us, but it seems that sacrificing a few here and there is okay for them; they tear through here a couple times a month, grabbing up anyone who's stupid enough to be out and about, and then take them to the Shadow Lake to be sacrificed."

There were so many questions Peter wanted to ask in response to all of that, but in the end he settled for, "And you have a safe place that keeps them out? _The_ Wild Hunt?" he added in a slightly more cutting tone. "A group of immensely powerful beings who are capable of erasing people from existence with minimal effort? And _you_ have the power to keep them from getting to the poor bastards in here?"

The woman matched him sneer for sneer, gray eyes turning stormy. "I've been here a long time, Peter Hale. Ten fucking _years_ , not that you're asking. I may not have been Emissary material when I got tossed in here, but I _wasn't_ powerless, and I've picked up _plenty_ of tricks since then, fuck you very much!"

Well. Peter had no idea what to say to that, although he took the little tidbits of implied information and stored them away for later assessment; she'd mentioned being an Emissary (well, _not_ being and Emissary, but whatever) and having power, so she must be a Druid of some sort, or at least have a Spark. And she'd been here for ten _years_? God, he could barely wrap his mind around that; she'd been in here for ages, since before he'd given Scott the Bite, since before Derek had returned to Beacon Hills, since before Derek had left Beacon Hills (the first time), since before the fire that had destroyed Peter's life entirely. Hell, even longer than that; she'd been trapped in here for, what, three or four years _before_ the fire? Damn, had Derek even _been_ in high school then? Peter couldn't seem to remember; either way, it was a long time to be gone from a world you'd previously called home.

Lord Almighty, trapped in this hideous place for a _decade_. It was enough to make him cringe in sympathetic misery.

"How old are you?" he found himself asking suddenly, looking at the woman with new interest; he'd been ready to write her off as a necessary nuisance before, but now...knowing that she'd been taken by the Wild Hunt and survived in this dismal alternate realm for a decade seemed to have inspired the smallest kernel of respect within him; he could appreciate her survival, appreciate the way she'd lasted all this time without getting killed or just giving up from the hopelessness of it all.

She arched an eyebrow, amusement returning as she gave a faintly sly smile. "Make a guess," she said.

He snorted. "Why?"

"Because I say so," she said in a too-sweet voice, batting her eyes at him.

He rolled his eyes. "Twenty-five."

She made an angry buzzer sound. "Nope! Guess again."

"Thirty-five," he guessed.

She made a face at him. "What? _No_ , definitely not."

"What's wrong with being thirty-five?" he asked, mildly affronted at her tone. " _I'm_ thirty-five."

Now _she_ was rolling her eyes at _him_ , as if he'd just said something completely ridiculous. "I'm well aware of how old you are, Peter, thanks." Then she shook her head slightly as if banishing some thought or memory. "Guess again," she told him before he could think to ask how in the world she knew how old he was.

He narrowed his eyes at her, studying the planes of her face, taking note of the faint laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and lips, observing the way she stood (confident but tense at the same time, like a soldier at rest who knows that danger could pop up at any time), and assessing the way her pale orange hair was styled in an easy to manage bob, practical without being ugly. "Thirty?" he offered.

She flashed him a smile, a real one, bright and affectionate. "Close," she told him, seeming to concede the contest to him with a slight nod. "I'm twenty-nine."

"Twenty-nine," he echoed, then frowned. "You were _nineteen_ when the Wild Hunt took you?"

Her smile vanished, replaced with a blank expression, her lips thinning and her eyes dimming. "Yeah," she said shortly. "Nineteen." She tucked her hands back into her pockets and started walking back the way she'd come from. "We'd better get going, if we want to get back to the bunker before nightfall; it's not a good idea to be topside in the dark, that's when the Hunt comes looking for sacrifices."

Peter jogged to catch up with her and then fell into step with her, the motion feeling oddly familiar, like he'd done it before. Which, like so much of the familiarity of this woman, made no sense; he was certain he'd never met her before, or even anyone like her before. He considered voicing this concern to the woman in question, because what if these snippets of d _éjà vu_ had something to do the Wild Hunt? But then something else occurred to him.

"You never told me your name," he realized, almost stopping in his tracks as it occurred to him; was he really _that_ off his game still, that he'd forgotten to even get her damn _name_?

The woman, for her part, slanted him another one of those unreadable looks, her eyes dark with emotions that flickered through her gaze too quickly to identify. "You can call me Riley," she said at last, after the silence between them stretched on too long, heavy with unasked questions and untold answers.

"Riley," Peter repeated, tasting it, getting a feel for it on his tongue. It felt familiar, too, but like something was missing, like there was some connection he was failing to make, like a puzzle piece forgotten or lost.

 _Oh, whatever_ , he thought irritably, shaking his head. _It's probably just the residual medication in my system, confusing everything. Once my body's clean of the drugs, things will start making sense again._

Or at last as much sense as could be expected when one was a borderline-psychotic werewolf who'd just served time in a bedlam house for the homicide-inclined supernatural elite.

"Nice to meet you, Riley," he told the woman beside him, deciding that maybe he should just roll with things and see how it all played out. If nothing else, maybe he could figure out why the red-head seemed so damned familiar.

Riley just gave a slightly pained smile, as if his words hurt her, and her scent was once again a faint mixture of grief and regret and affection. "You, too," was all she said in response, and Peter was somehow not surprised to hear the uptick in her heartbeat and realize that she was lying, although about what exactly, he couldn't say.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Hi, everyone! Posting the second chapter of this sooner than anticipated, mostly because the sway that the plot bunnies hold over me hasn't let up in the slightest; I'm actually spending my breaks at work scribbling bits of the story in one of my many notebooks. XD Thankfully, I have a day off today to decompress and relax and plot at my own pace...regrettably I'm also in a continuous state of quasi-stress, because my state ID card (I don't have a license because I don't drive at the moment) somehow managed to magically disappear from my wallet even though such a thing is entirely impossible because IT LITERALLY NEVER LEAVES MY WALLET. *fumes* But. Anyway. Trying to stay positive and not think about the trip to the DMV I'll need to be making next week, so to cheer myself up, here's Chapter 2! :D_

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

Riley couldn't decide if she wanted to laugh or cry.

Or scream. Screaming seemed like a pretty good option, too.

Peter Hale. Peter _fucking_ Hale. The universe was screwing with her, she was sure of it. She couldn't imagine what the punchline of this cruel cosmic joke might be, but she figured that some deity somewhere was laughing their ass off at her expense.

What other possible explanation could there be for the Wild Hunt taking Peter Hale, of all people. Especially _now_. If they'd really wanted Peter, why not snatch him ten years ago, when they'd taken both her and her sister? It's not like it would have been hard for them to do it; Riley had been standing less than a foot away from him at the time.

God, she could still remember bolting through the forest and screaming out his name, desperate to see his face one last time before the Hunt took her.

It was totally messing with her head to have him walking _right beside her_ , after all these years of being utterly certain that she'd never see him again.

And, yeah, he had no fucking clue who she was, because the Wild Hunt had erased her from the real world, but whatever. He was here. _Here_ , with her.

Curious as to who he might have become in the intervening years, she sneaked another look at him from the corner of her eye. She'd been so blown away by the realization that he was here, in the realm of the Lost Ones, that moving beyond the initial stage of stunned recognition had taken her longer than she'd like to admit. Literally, her mind had come to a screaming halt of _Oh my God, Peter Hale_ , and her brain had only sluggishly rebooted once she'd given herself a very severe mental kick in the ass.

Now, she decided to take the opportunity to look at him more closely, and pinpoint the differences between the man beside her and the one she'd known a decade ago.

He was older, obviously, thirty-five instead of twenty-five, and he'd filled out quite a bit since then; Peter had always been fit, but now he was built like a cross between a GQ model and an MMA fighter, and she couldn't help but eye his physique a little longer than was strictly necessary.

His face was different, too, just enough to throw her off a little. He was still Peter, of course, because duh. They could both be senior citizens and she'd still be able to spot him a mile off. In any case, his features now were more mature she remembered, more masculine. He was still pretty, but it was a more rugged thing now, less young adult cheekbones and more sexy jawline. And Lord Almighty, _that goatee_.

Her Peter had never even had stubble; he'd almost always been clean shaven (with the exception of his extra furriness during shifts, but that was to be expected). So, yeah, that was different; it somehow made him more refined and more roguish all at once, and even though she'd never been a fan of facial hair, she couldn't deny that he wore it well.

Of course, he wore everything well; he was Peter fucking Hale. Even the drab in-patient scrubs he was wearing looked good on him...though they had her wondering just what facility he'd been in; not a medical place, because his werewolf healing prevented illnesses and healed up wounds so fast it wasn't even funny. And he'd mentioned being drugged earlier, which narrowed down the remaining possibilities even further...Honestly, there was only one place that came immediately to mind, and it was one that still cropped up in her nightmares from time to time. Still, she'd need to ask to be sure.

 _Not that I need to know_ , she reminded herself sternly. _I haven't seen him in ten years. We're strangers. His life before coming here is none of my business. At all._

She was _still_ morbidly curious, though.

All the nosy questions she wanted to ask were forgotten, however, when they rounded a corner and were faced with a snarling shadow hound, its fiery red eyes disturbingly intent upon them as it prowled closer.

"What," Peter said in a low voice as he looked over at the massive beast with a mixture of awe and alarm, "is that?"

"A shadow hound," she whispered back, reaching slowly for the knife she had tucked inside of her coat. "The Wild Hunt uses them for tracking prey and running down sacrifices. They patrol the streets here," she went on, one hand closing around the hilt of her knife as she squinted her eyes, trying to peer through the twisting shadows that wrapped around the creature and get a look at the gaps between the scaly material that covered its skin like some sort of armor, "but they shouldn't be out this early. They don't come out before dark!"

Peter made a plaintive shushing sound as her voice rose and the shadow hound growled in response and crept even closer. "It seems," he said, his voice a little too calm to be believable, "that this one, at least, likes to stroll while it's still light out."

"Motherfucker," was all Riley had to say in answer to that, then whipped out her knife and hurled it at the hound; it flashed through the air, the symbols she'd scratched into the metal flaring bright as the spells she'd layered into the weapon activated, helping it fly straight and true.

It went into one of the hound's front ankle joints, stabbing through the leathery skin, piercing muscle and severing tendons as it went. The hound let out a strangled yelp as its front left leg buckled beneath it, sending it crashing to the ground.

"Stay there," Riley told Peter, pulling out another dagger and testing the edge of the blade with the pad of her thumb. "Even hobbled a shadow hound can still-"

She broke off with a furious curse as she looked over and saw Peter walking forward towards the hound; it made her abruptly enraged at his sexy long legs because he was covering the distance very quickly and getting _way too fucking close to the hound_.

She lunged forward and grabbed him by the elbow with her free hand, yanking him back just as the shadow hound surged up from the ground, flailing out its uninjured leg in a savage slashing motion that missed Peter but caught Riley along the back of her left shoulder.

Pain lanced through her upper body, hot and piercing, but she ignored it. It was hardly the first time she'd been injured while in this realm and it wasn't going to be the last; all she had to do was end the fight quickly before the blood loss got to her. After that, it was just a matter of getting back to the bunker and getting Carmen to use one of the healing crystals on the wounds.

In the meantime... "What about _stay back_ was too hard for you to understand?" she snapped at Peter, elbowing him hard in the ribs to force him even farther away from the still-thrashing shadow hound. "Blood and thunder," she said in exasperation, "you used to be intelligent!"

Peter opened his mouth as if to argue, eyes flashing bright blue (blue?! His eyes had been gold last time she'd seen him, what the fuck?!). "You're-"

"More experienced with shadow hounds," she all but snarled at him, increasingly fed up with him for reasons she couldn't pinpoint. "So shut up and _stay put_ ," she ordered, retrieving her dagger from where she'd dropped it the moment before.

And before Peter could say anything else, she bolted forward, ducking underneath the hound's paw as it tried to disembowel her. And then she somersaulted forward to bypass its snapping jaws and end up by its neck. It twisted its head, trying to snap at her, she was faster, plunging her knife into its throat and then dragging the blade through its flesh until she finally succeeding in severing its jugular vein.

Hot blood with both the consistency and color of liquefied tar gushed across her hands and sprayed across her face and arms but she didn't react, didn't dare pull out her knife and step away until the shadow hound had stopped thrashing and gone still.

* * *

Peter was, for one of the very few times in his life, at a complete and total loss for words.

Of everything he'd expected to happen in the fight with the, what was it called, shadow hound? Well, being bossed around and saved by Riley certainly hadn't been on his list of What's Going To Happen Here. And it had only gotten more surreal, particularly when Riley had rushed forward and slashed the hound's throat so deeply that Peter was surprised that she hadn't accidentally beheaded the thing.

"Come on," Riley said now, retrieving her knives and wiping them off on the sleeves of her already-bloodstained coat, which now seemed to permanently ruined from the sticky black blood that was soaking into the fabric. "Now we _really_ need to hurry and get back to the bunker."

"Why?" he asked immediately, the word popping out of his mouth before he could think better of it. "You killed the hound."

And sure enough, Riley turned to give him an aggravated look, her gray eyes dark like thunderclouds. "Yes," she said said testily. "I killed _a_ hound; _one_ of the _many_ that prowl this realm. One that shouldn't have been here to being with, not at this time of day. So tell me: do you really want to hang around to see if there are any more?" She arched an eyebrow at him in a challenging manner, as if daring him to argue with her.

God help him, Peter did open his mouth to argue with her (why, he didn't know; maybe it was the principle of the thing), but then his gaze drifted to the gashes across the back of her shoulder, where the rips in her coat were tinted red (red meaning it was _her_ blood, not the hound's, and somehow that changed everything), and his mouth snapped shut. "Okay," he said instead. "Lead the way."

She blinked at him like she was surprised at his acquiescence, then gave him a long look that was more than a little suspicious, like she thought he was pulling her leg. She didn't question his sudden easy agreement, though, just gave a quick nod and started off down the street, holding her left arm at a certain angle in a way that Peter assumed was intended to help her injuries in some way; ease the pain, slow the bleeding? As a werewolf Peter had never needed to worry much about injuries that, for him, rarely lasted longer than a day at most.

He wondered briefly if he should offer to help her with the pain, then discounted the notion; not only did he barely know this woman, she didn't seem like the kind to accept that sort of help. Besides, she was now walking too quickly for him to pull her aside to ask about it; wherever this secure bunker of hers was, she certainly was in a hurry to get there.

Then again, considering the fact that there were supposedly more of those hideous shadow hounds lurking around somewhere, he couldn't exactly blame her for wanting to take shelter; he wasn't wildly keen on encountering another one of those beasts anytime soon, either.

They reached their destination after a brisk fifteen minute jog that took them through more empty, foggy streets that raised the hair on the back of his neck with their silence and lack of life. Eventually, Riley led him to a small squat building that had no windows and only one door, thick and metal and covered in enough wards that he could feel the magic crackling in the air from ten paces away.

"You did those?" he asked, tracing the swirling patterns and interlocking runes with an appreciative eye.

"Some of them," Riley said, her face oddly blank and her voice strangely impassive. "My sister did a bunch when we first got dumped here, and I added some more over the years."

"Your sister," Peter repeated, frowning. Something was... _off_ , with Riley. She'd gone distant, in a way that made his wolf shift under his skin, uneasy and not knowing why. "Will she be down in the bunker?"

Riley gave a sharp bark of a laugh, bitter and pain-filled. "Not unless we've gone back in time five years," she said, grief and anger and guilt wafting from her strongly enough to make Peter curse his werewolf senses. "Rhoswen is..." Riley shook her head, and the anger and guilt lightened, leaving just old grief behind. "Rose was killed by the Hunt," she explained. "She got a little too close to working out a way out of this hellhole, so they snatched her and sacrificed her before she could finish the spells."

Peter swallowed hard, bizarrely grief-stricken by this news despite the fact that he'd never met Riley's sister. _Why_ was he feeling this much grief for a woman he'd never met? "My condolences," he said after a moment, is voice rough, "for your loss."

Riley just shrugged, her face back to being an unreadable mask. She didn't even bother responding, just stepped forward and swiped a hand across a particular section of the wards, which flared extra bright for a moment before dimming. "Come on," she said at last, grabbing onto the thick metal handle of the door and twisting it. "We should get inside and get into the underground bunker before another hound scents my blood and comes looking for us."

Peter figured that that was probably a good idea, and wasted no time in slipping in through the proffered doorway, Riley close on his heels.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Welcome to Chapter 3! Where we have Peter and Riley being a little more noticeably sassy, a not-very-helpful flashback, and Riley's best friend Carmen who has amusing shirts. Anyway, thanks to those of you who are reading this story, with bonus thanks to those who've reviewed so far: masqueraderoses, willdawg992003, MissAnimeMiss, and bridgetlynn. You guys are so great! :)_

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

* * *

Peter followed Riley down wide concrete staircase that led to the main body of the bunker from the door they'd entered through. At one point he made a comment about getting boxed in with just the one entrance, but Riley assured him (in a dismissive way that was vaguely insulting) that they had alternative entrances and that he didn't need to worry about it (that last part of her response had come accompanied with a fierce look that warned him against pursuing the topic, and so he had, reluctantly, let the subject drop).

They passed through the main area of the bunker, which seemed to be about the size of a ballroom, if ballrooms were dim and gray and full of people who looked like life had tossed them into the gutter ten times too many.

A few of them glanced at him curiously as he and Riley walked by, but most of them just stared at him blankly before looking away, like his sudden arrival wasn't anything unusual or interesting.

As far as he knew, it might not be. Maybe the Wild Hunt snatched and erased people all the time, and Peter had just never known about it because, well, the victims got erased from everyone's memories; remembering someone taken by the Hunt would be, by default, totally impossible.

That irritated him for reasons he couldn't put into words, but he supposed it was only reasonable to be upset; he'd been ripped away from a world that he...well, he hadn't been terribly fond of his life, especially not while in Eichen House, but it was _his life_ , dammit; he'd fought and clawed his way through hell for it (hell, he'd fought Death itself for a second chance at it), and deserved to live it out. Not get abducted by some B-movie extra on an intimidating horse (the creepy rider and the horse with demonically glowing eyes were all that Peter had been able to recall so far about the Hunt and how he'd been taken, and even that much was still blurry and hazy in his mind, something he blamed on the drugs still twisting through his bloodstream).

"Where are we going?" he asked Riley as she threaded her way through the little clusters of people in the bunker, some of them sitting on makeshift pallets and others slumping against the support pillars.

"A healer," she replied shortly, lifting her injured arm with a slight wince. "I need to get this taken care of before I go back out."

"Fair enough," is Peter's automatic response before the last half of her answer fully registers. Once it does, he scowls. "What do you mean, go back out?"

She gave him a droll look and rolled her eyes. "You used to be smart, I swear. Has your IQ dropped in the intervening years or what?"

He flashed his teeth at her in a snarl.

She rolled her eyes again, looking thoroughly unimpressed. "Yeah, yeah. Grr, rawr, nasty werewolf, I get it. Don't pull a muscle, old man."

His snarl was replaced with a sputter. "Old man?" he demanded indignantly.

She just smirked at him. "You're pre-middle age, Peter. How's it feel?"

"You're not exactly a young little thing, either," Peter sniped back at her. "Thirty isn't so far from thirty-five."

"Excuse you," Riley replied, sounding vaguely offended. "I am _twenty-nine_ , thank you. Twenty. Nine. Not thirty."

He snorted. "Such a difference," he said dryly.

She pointed a finger at him threateningly. "Don't make me hex you," she warned, eyes sparking with mischievous light.

Peter opened his mouth to dare her to try her worst, but then they evidently arrived at wherever Riley had been taking them, which turned out to be a room down the hall from the main portion of the bunker, a faded rod of asclepius painted on it, presumably denoting a medical purpose for the room.

When Riley knocked and the door opened, though, the woman who opened it didn't look like any nurse he'd ever met (and he'd seen more than his fair share of the type, both during his hospital stay after and fire and during his stint in the Eichen House).

A statuesque Hispanic woman in ripped jeans and a shirt reading THERE'S MAGIC IN THE AIR AND IT'S CALLED WI-FI gives both of them an assessing look before zeroing in on Riley's injured shoulder. "Dammit, Riley," is all she says, but there's enough exasperation in her voice to knock down an elephant so Peter figures that this is far from the first time Riley has come to this woman for medical assistance.

Riley, for her part, just gives a sheepish smile and lifts her uninjured shoulder in a slight shrug. "Anything I can say to make you less annoyed with me?" she asked wryly.

"Nothing whatsoever," the other woman replied before her gaze drifted to Peter. "And your sexy werewolf companion would be...?"

"The Hunt's latest victim," Riley explained. "Peter, this is Carmen, our healer; she's my friend, so behave. Carmen," she said to the woman, "this is Peter."

"Peter," Carmen repeated carefully, as if testing the taste of his name on her tongue. Then her eyes widened slightly. "Peter Hale?" she asked in disbelief before spinning around to look at Riley again. " _Your_ Peter Hale?"

Riley huffed out an irritated sigh. "Not _my_ anything," she grumbled, but Peter heard a faint tremor in her heart at the words, which only increased his frustrated confusion to infuriating levels.

Riley's words and attitude implied that they knew each other, but he knew he'd never met her before today. He had flaws aplenty, but he never forgot a face. He certainly wouldn't have forgotten a pretty face like hers, particularly if she was a tenth as powerful in magic as he suspected.

"Can we come in," Riley was saying now, her heart-rate evening out as she spoke to Carmen, "or are you going to leave me bleeding all over the hallway?"

Carmen rolled her eyes and waved at them to come inside and hurry up about it. "Get in here, you dweeb. You, too, wolf." She closed the door after them and started walking towards the opposite end of the room where there was an examination table surrounded by a dividing curtain hung from the ceiling, which split the room into two smaller rooms. "You know the drill, Ri, strip to the waist and lay face-down."

Riley hummed an affirmative, pulling out the two knives she'd used earlier and setting them gently down on a nearby table before turning to pin Peter in a very severe look. "Turn around," she told him in an incredibly serious if-you-don't-do-this-I-will-carve-out-your-spleen-and-feed-it-to-you voice, "and don't you dare look."

Peter wasn't sure why Carmen gave a snort of laughter, but nodded, finding Riley's threatening tone equal parts annoying and endearing. "Yes, ma'am," he drawled, spinning on his heel and fixing his gaze on a patch of dull gray wall that looked exactly like all the other bits of wall around it.

There were some rustling sounds as Riley shucked out of her clothes in a quick and efficient manner, and then her sharp intake of breath as she settled down on the chilly examination table.

"Dammit, Riley," Carmen said again, this time sounding genuinely upset. "What are doing, picking fights with shadow hounds?"

"I hardly picked a fight," Riley retorted. "I was bringing Peter here and it just attacked us."

A moment of silence, then, "Sundown isn't for another two hours," Carmen said in a low voice, and Peter could hear the underlying tension in her voice and smell the sudden hint of fear in her scent.

"Oh, really?" Riley shot back. "Here I thought I'd somehow confused day and night. Good to know we've straightened that out."

Carmen gave a low curse and Peter suppressed the urge to chuckle. "Are you sure there's no off button for you?" the Hispanic woman griped, her tone once again one of affectionate exasperation.

"Mm," Riley said in response. "'Fraid not. I'm a defective model."

Carmen snorted again, then finally seemed to remember that Peter existed. "You want me to send your wolf away, or let him come over?"

"Again," Riley said, and that edge was back in her voice, "he's not mine. I just happened to find him wandering around like a moron on my way out to hunt."

"Hey," Peter said, affronted. "My muddled state is hardly my own fault; I'd just been abducted from a bedlam house and brought to an alternate dimension, after all. Not the best circumstances for lucid behavior."

"I'm sure the drugs didn't help, either," Riley muttered, but her voice was either low enough so that only Peter could hear, or Carmen was choosing not to comment on the remark, because Riley's friend circled right back around to her original question.

"So am I letting him stay," she pressed, "or kicking him out?"

A really long stretch of silence, before Riley finally answered. "He can stay," she said, her voice tired but firm. "And he can turn around now," she added, clearly more for Peter's benefit than Carmen's, "if he gets bored with the incredibly exciting staring contest he's got going with the wall."

Peter rolled his eyes even though no one was paying him enough attention to see. "What happened to don't dare look?" he asked slyly.

Riley snorted. "I'm face-down on the table, asshole. There ain't nothing to see now but my ink."

"Ink?" Peter repeated, curious despite himself. Turning around, he saw that Riley was indeed face-down on the examination table, with Carmen bending over her and prodding gently at the gashes on Riley's shoulders. Gashes that, Peter saw now, were a bit more severe than he'd initially believed; they were at least half an inch deep and three inches long, and Peter found himself wondering how Riley had been able to act so casually when sporting what must have been an excruciating injury for a human woman. Was she just so used to being wounded that she paid it no mind?

Peter found that he didn't like that idea very much, although he couldn't say _why_ precisely it bothered him. Then his gaze zeroed in on the picture inked across Riley's back and discovered something else that bothered him even more.

"I've seen your tattoo before," he realized, staring at the detailed depiction of a crow that spanned the majority of Riley's upper back, the wings outstretched and curving across her skin.

It then occurred to him, as a tense silence settled in around them, that he couldn't remember _when_ he'd seen it. Immediately after that, it occurred to him that it _shouldn't be possible_ for him to remember since he'd never met Riley before today.

"Of course you've seen it before," Riley said at last, her heart rate steady even as her scent soured with loneliness and grief. "You were with me when I got it."

"I-" Peter shook his head, thoroughly confused. "What? No. No, I can't have been, that's impossi-" But even as he spoke, faint and disjointed images began to flicker in his mind's eye.

 _He was standing in the reception area of a tattoo parlor, waiting for **something**. (What was he waiting for?)_

 _Then suddenly one of the employees came out of one of the curtained-off rooms and approached him. "She said that you can come on in," the guy told Peter. (She who?)_

" _Thanks," Peter said in reply, his lips forming the word without conscious thought, and then he realized in a distant sort of way that his voice sounded **young**. And after glancing down at his body, he realized that not only did he sound young, **physically** he was young, too; mid-twenties, maybe? _

_Ducking through the curtain and going into the little client room, Peter was met immediately by the sight of a young woman face-down on the tattoo bed, naked from the waist up with her back exposed. And across her back was an incomplete version of the glorious crow tattoo, and Peter could once again appreciate how long the art must have taken given both the size of the tattoo and the level of detail._

" _What are you doing here, Peter?" the woman on the table asked, and Peter was shocked to hear a voice that sounded like Riley's, only much younger, like she was in her late teens._

" _I came to help with the pain," young Peter said in a voice just low enough to keep the tattoo artist from overhearing. "It's the least I can do,"he went on, pulling up a chair at the end of bed near Riley's head and reaching out to grasp her hand with easy familiarity, "since it's partially my fault you're getting this to begin with." Besides, he almost added but didn't, you hate needles. I didn't want you to be alone. (Riley hated needles? How did he know that?)_

 _The younger Riley on the bed twisted her head so she could give Peter an exasperated but affectionate look, her long hair swishing across the headrest as she changed position. (Long hair? That wasn't right...Riley wore her hair short. Well, obviously she didn't always, current-Peter told himself, mind reeling from what he was seeing...no, not seeing...re-living?)._

" _I **wanted** to get the tattoo, Peter," young Riley was saying now."And they gave me some sort of numbing thing," she added, gesturing vaguely to her back with her free hand in a motion that made the bracelet around her wrist flash as it caught the light, briefly illuminating the faint symbols carved into the metal. "It's helping with the pain."_

" _Not enough," young Peter retorted, not letting go of her other hand even as black lines started crisscrossing on the underside of his wrist. "I could smell your pain the second I came in."_

 _Riley opened her mouth to say something back, then subsided when her tattoo artist finally returned with the next round of ink and a new needle attachment for filling in more of the crow's plumage. "Thanks for coming," she said at last, her grip on his hand tightening in his as the tattoo artist resumed his work._

" _Of course," was Peter's response._

Then suddenly the vision (the memory?) was splintering apart and fading, and Peter was left standing in a dingy little room with current-day Riley face-down on an entirely different kind of table with gashes on her shoulder and Carmen eyeing him with a mixture of concern and wariness.

"I know you," he blurted out, staring at Riley (or rather, Riley's back, because, duh, face-down on the table). "I _knew_ you."

" _Knew_ being the operative word there," Riley said after a moment of startled silence. "Past tense." Then she twisted her head slightly to look at Carmen. "Can we get on with the healing? I've got shit to do."

Carmen nodded briskly. "Yeah, sure thing. Let me just grab a crystal from my kit." She went over to a small metal box that was stored behind some other medical equipment on top of a nearby counter. "This is going to hurt," Carmen warned as she returned to Riley's side, a glowing red stone in one hand.

"It always does," Riley muttered, laying her head back down and closing her eyes as if bracing herself.

Peter found himself walking over to Riley's other side, dragging over a rickety stool to sit on even as he reached out and took her right hand in his.

She stiffened immediately, her heartbeat ratcheting up in tempo. "What are you doing?" she demanded, voice low with suppressed emotion.

"Siphoning your pain," he told her in a calm tone, trying not to wince as the pain drain started and began sucking Riley's pain out of her and into him, leaving a burning sensation under his skin.

" _Why?_ "

 _Because I want to_ , he almost said but didn't. "Well," he said instead, "it seems like the least I can do, considering the fact that you wouldn't have been injured in the first place if not for me. Also," he added, injecting false cheer into his voice, "I need to make up for having forgotten you."

Riley huffed out a short sigh. "Why does it even matter?" she asked tiredly. "You still don't _actually_ remember me, you just know that you _should_."

"Even so," he returned stubbornly, trying to ignore how frustrated he was at the combined smell of blood and magic that was drowning out Riley's scent, "I owe you for it."

"No, you don't," she muttered. "It's not your fault." Her hand tightened in his before relaxing. "The Wild Hunt is responsible. For then and now," she added bitterly, left shoulder spasming as Carmen passed her crystal across the first of the gashes, sealing it closed with a peculiar whooshing sound even as the scent of ozone crackled in the air. "Fuck, that burns," Riley hissed, even as her flesh knitted back together without any hint of scarring.

Peter gripped her hand a little tighter, barely managing to suppress his wince when the black veins on his arm throbbed a bit in protest of the additional pain siphoning. "What magic are you using?" he asked Carmen in an attempt to distract himself.

"I'm not doing much myself," Carmen replied, expression intent as she finished up the first of Riley's wounds and moved on to the next. "This ruby is one of the Jewels of Aceso."

"Aceso was a goddess of healing," Riley explained through gritted teeth, her entire body tense. "That gem and the others in that box were created by a sisterhood that worshiped her; they're imbued with different healing powers, supposedly blessed by the goddess herself."

"Red for repairing open wounds; slashes, gashes, gunshot wounds, punctures, stuff like that," Carmen said, picking up where her friend had left off and rattling off additional information. "Blue for internal injuries, purple for broken bones, green for sicknesses or infections, orange helps with fevers...there are a couple others, but they don't get as much use here." She pulled the glowing red crystal away from Riley's skin and gently prodded at her friend's upper back. "How's it feel?" she asked.

Riley lifted her left shoulder a bit. "Sore," she answered. "Achey. A little stiff." She flexed it again. "But much better. Thanks."

"No problem," Carmen said, patting Riley lightly on the shoulder before turning around and crossing to the metal box on the counter to stow away the red crystal that was still pulsing with power. "Just remember, your shoulder's going to be tender for a few more days; try not to strain it, and you should be fine."

Peter could practically hear Riley rolling her eyes when she spoke. "Yeah, yeah," the red-head answered, her tone wry. "I know. Not my first time on this joyride, Carmen, and you know it."

"I do know it," Carmen returned, snapping the lid of the box shut and turning to survey Riley (well, Riley's now-healed back) with her hands on her hips. After a moment, she turned back around, grabbed a small bundle of clothing from a nearby cupboard, and then strode over to her friend's side. "Get dressed," she told Riley, tossing the clothing over her friend's head before stepping away and yanking the dividing curtain around so that it separated Riley from both Carmen and Peter.

"Bossy," he heard Riley grumbled, followed by a shuffling sound as she presumably slide off the table and tugged on her new clothes.

Sure enough, Riley shoved the curtain aside a couple minutes later, wearing a t-shirt proclaiming _If you tickle me I'm not responsible for your injuries,_ along with a gray hoodie that hung a little loose on her. Peter idly wondered if the smart-ass t-shirts were something Carmen had had with her when she'd been taken by the Hunt and that was why she seemed to have such a healthy supply of them, or if the Wild Hunt was just prone to abducting sassy people who had amusing shirts and Carmen just ended up with them all somehow once the originals owners didn't want or need them any longer.

He almost immediately decided that such a trivial thing probably didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and dismissed it from his mind, instead returning his focus to Riley herself. "Now what?" he asked.

"Now," Riley replied, "I go out hunting, and you get some rest." She turned to Carmen. "Get him settled into a room for me, will you? He needs to sleep off the shock and the drugs, and I need to go and get dinner before it gets too late."

"Sure thing," Carmen replied easily. "Just...be careful, alright?" Her eyebrows drew down into a faint frown. "The next sacrifice is less than a week away, and if they catch you, we're all screwed."

Riley made a dismissive noise but nodded anyway. "I'll keep an eye out," she promised, heading for the door. "And as soon as I have enough hares for tonight's stew, I'll come right back."

Carmen chewed on her lower lip, but assented with a slight nod. "Okay," she said after a moment. "Just watch your back out there, yeah?"

"Always do," Riley replied, and then she was gone, out the door and down the hall.

* * *

 _A/N: Aaaaand, that's Chapter 3 all done! It actually ended up being longer than I anticipated, so that's nifty. ;D Chapter 4 will be posted sometime within the next week, depending on my work schedule. See you next time!_


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Hi, everyone! I hope you're all doing well. :) Thanks to everyone who's reading this, with bonus thanks to you wonderful people who reviewed last time: Amazeballs96 and Noorxoxo. Thank you so much for your lovely reviews! They made my day. :)_

 _Anyway, I just realized how much fun I can have with this story by playing with bits and pieces of Irish and Celtic folklore and mythology. Ah, this is going to be great. ;D Anyway, much like Teen Wolf does, I'm going to be taking actual legends/myths and adapting them for storytelling purposes. So some stuff will be true to the original myths, some will be made up by me or adapted or so on. Enjoy! :)_

 _Also, Peter's part in this chapter is smaller compared to Riley's, sorry! But there's exposition regarding the realm of the Lost Ones that can only come from Riley, so there's a lot of that in this chapter, world-building stuff and the like. ;D Anyway, there'll be more Peter in the next chapter; we'll get to see what else he gets up to while Riley's out hunting. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Read onward!_

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

* * *

"I have a question," Peter said to Carmen as he followed her down yet another featureless hallway.

"That does _not_ surprise me," Carmen remarked, flashing him a crooked smile. "What's up?"

"It's about Riley," he began, then faltered, trying to work out the least obnoxious way to ask what he was wondering.

"Spit it out already," Carmen griped. "Your thinking face makes _my_ head hurt."

Peter resisted the urge to snap his teeth at her. "What is she?"

Carmen blinked, like his question had caught her off guard. "She's Riley."

Peter snorted, rolling his eyes. "But what _is_ she?" he pressed. "She used a spelled knife in the fight with the shadow hound earlier," he explained, "and said something about helping her sister with the wards protecting this place?"

"Ah." Carmen nodded. "Okay, I get your question now."

"And the answer would be...?" He growled at her when no response was forthcoming. "Are you going to make me beg?" Not that he ever _would_ , but he couldn't help but wonder if that was what she was after, this strange woman who Riley called friend.

Carmen flashed him a sharp smile. "As entertaining as I might find that," she said slyly, "I suspect that I might not live through the experience." Before Peter could snap out a response, Carmen spoke again. "Riley's sister, Rhoswen, was a very skilled Druid. Emissary for a prominent werewolf Pack and everything." She gave Peter an unreadable look at that, then continued. "Riley, though..." Carmen made a humming sound. "Riley's different. She inherited some psychic skills from her father, but its the gifts she inherited from her mother that are truly impressive."

Peter couldn't help the growl of impatience that rolled out of his chest. "And those gifts would be?"

Carmen sent him a faintly annoyed look, like she was impatient with him, but answered anyway. "She's a mage," Carmen told him. "A damn good one, too, even though she never got a chance to be formally trained."

Peter scowled. "Why not?" he asked. "I mean, from age nineteen onward I understand, because she's been stuck here." He waved a hand around vaguely to indicate all of, what had Riley called it, _Tech na cinn Caillte_ , the realm of the so-called Lost Ones. "But if she's that gifted, her training should have started sooner, before she was taken. Unless she was a bit of a late bloomer?"

Carmen shook her head. "No, her Spark manifested when she was, like, ten or something. But her parents were killed before they could start her training, so all she had was her sister. And don't get me wrong, Rose was a good sister and she raised Riley the best she could...but she was a Druid, not a mage; she didn't have a Spark, not like her mother and sister, so she couldn't really help Riley get control of her magic. Riley was pretty much on her own for figuring out her magic and her psychometry. The latter of which caused her a shitload of problems, too," Carmen added darkly.

Peter sifted through his memories, trying to recall what little he knew about psychic abilities in general and psychometry specifically; if he was right, it was some sort of tactile clairvoyance. "What happened?" he asked Carmen.

Carmen shook her head vehemently. "If you really want to know the details, ask Riley. What I know, she told me in confidence. All that I'm free to say is that she spent two of her teenage years locked away in a mental institution and it sucked."

A chill ran down Peter's spine, and his wolf stirred uneasily within him. "Did she happen to tell you the name of the facility?"

"Yeah," Carmen replied. "Some hellhole called Eichen House."

* * *

There were some days where Riley found it amusing that the entire empty town had a layout suspiciously similar to a circle of Hecate, the cobblestone roads curving and twisting and winding around the deserted buildings in just the right ways to make the overall effect something not-quite-random, but only if you were looking closely enough.

And there were even days where she found it interesting that town was surrounded by a tall brick wall that wrapped around everything, boxing in the entire town in a very distinctive triangle shape that was only visible if you climbed to the top of the windmill on the north side of town. Which was inadvisable to do now that the _each-uisge_ viciously attacked anyone who went higher than a second story balcony; normally those spirit creatures kept to their water horse forms and therefore actual bodies of water, but a smaller sect of the things had assumed violent bird of prey forms, and even Riley didn't like to provoke them if she didn't have to.

Basically, the overall layout was a magic circled trapped in a triangle; presumably there was some sort of deeper meaning in it, otherwise why lay it all out like that, but Riley had never worked it out herself, and Rose had been taken as a sacrifice before she could tell Riley the secrets she'd learned.

In any case, sometimes the layout amused or intrigued her. On other days, though, it irritated her, frustrated her, and aggravated her beyond belief.

Today was one of _those_ days. Not only had a sudden rain shower this morning washed away the chalk markings that she and Carmen had put up on the corners of buildings to help themselves navigate the twisting streets of the empty town, but she just honestly did not have the patience to make her way through the winding and intertwining roads to get to the wall when her shoulder was still tender and aching. Not to mention the fact that the sun, while not visible through the ever-present cloud cover and fog, would be going down soon.

And nightfall was when all the fun stuff _really_ came out to play. Shadow hounds in _packs_ , not just one or two. And the Sluagh, the transmuted and twisted souls reaped by the Hunt that had taken on unnerving physical forms that seemed to resemble devil rays; Riley wasn't clear on the details, but she knew that the Sluagh were dark souls, dark creatures, and that they fed on fear and pain and hunted down the Lost Ones just as the shadow hounds did, except where the hounds would just tear you apart to kill you or maim you so the Hunt could more easily grab you for a sacrifice, the Sluagh liked to play with you, whispering to you in the voices of lost loved ones and doing whatever they could to terrify you witless before swooping in for the real physical attack, the serrated edges on their tails ripping into your flesh even as their mouths with too many needle-like teeth tried to find purchase on your neck or stomach.

She loathed the Sluagh. She knew she maybe shouldn't hate them so much; they were lost souls, after all, and it wasn't their fault that the Wild Hunt had taken them and twisted them into something dark and disturbing. And deep down, she didn't blame them for what they were. She still hated them, though. And she definitely did not want to encounter any of them right now.

So, yeah, she needed to get to the wall, get over it, and do a quick hunting trip in the surrounding forest before sundown came and left her dealing with all manner of bloodthirsty nastiness.

Somehow, she managed to make her way through the town without encountering anything that wanted to chow down on her intestines. She might have found that suspicious, but truth be told she was too grateful to see the ten foot fall looming above her to wonder at why nothing was chasing her down the deserted streets, baying for her blood.

She took a moment to stretch a bit, testing her range of motion with her almost-all-better-but-not-quite shoulder. Then she wasted no time to clambering up the brick wall, taking advantage of the natural handholds in the stone until she was high enough to grasp the top of the wall and heave herself over.

Climbing back down was something she needed to take a little more slowly, because she'd learned the hard way that navigating her way through the forest with an injured leg was not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination; not only was it physically agonizing just from the overall exertion, but there were predatory creatures in the forest, too. Nothing as deliberately antagonistic as the beings found _within_ the walls (and wasn't that ironic, that the supposedly empty town was more dangerous than the creep forest with its tall trees and ominous atmosphere), but a dangerous creature was a dangerous creature, and Riley wasn't going to take any chances, not right now.

Not now, with a sacrifice coming up and Peter Hale waiting back at the bunker.

 _Peter_ , she thought, a pang of longing and regret sharp in her chest before she shook her head abruptly. _No_ , she told herself almost angrily _. Focus. You need to focus, dammit. Everyone's counting on you to bring back something for dinner. Don't you dare let them down._

She carefully shimmied her way down to the ground on the outer side of the wall, and quickly but carefully hustled into the forest that was barely twenty paces away. It was a strange forest, with pine trees and oak trees and redwoods and eucalyptus all mixing and growing together despite the fact that in the natural world those trees all grew in totally different climates and environments. But she'd long ago given up making any sort of logical sense of this realm, and so barely blinked at the branches of a eucalyptus twining together with the branches of the pine tree next to it as she jogged into the woods and started making her way to where she and Carmen had set up the first snare.

It was disappointingly devoid of captured animals, so she moved on to the next snare; that one, luckily, had caught something, a moss hare that was the size of a full-grown Maine Coon cat.

Moss hares, she mused as she quickly dispatched it (and God, why did she still feel those little pangs of guilt as she took its life?), were another creature that she didn't understand with her logical mind. It was, at first glance, very similar to an ordinary hare or rabbit, with the long ears and the strong legs. But instead of fur, it has thick green moss covering its body, and its bones were stone. Literally, stone. She didn't understand how the moss hares could even have the strength to move their heavy little bodies given the density of their bones, but she figured that maybe that was why they were always so thick and meaty with muscles.

She slung the hare over her shoulder and quickly checked on the remaining snares (all empty) before doubling back and returning to the wall. Had it not been so close to sundown, she would have stayed and actually hunted, maybe tried to get a deer or some other type of big game since that would last them longer and mean that she wouldn't need to go out again so soon, but with darkness starting to fall even as she made it back to the wall and began the awkward moss-hare-across-her-shoulders climb...yeah, she couldn't risk staying out any longer than this, not when all the things that wanted to eat her would be coming out to play soon.

Once at the top of the wall, she carefully dropped the dead hare down onto the ground below and then took a moment -just a small, small moment- to look out over the fogged-in town and wonder if she'd ever get out. Or if this was all there was for her now.

From this angle, she could vaguely glimpse the way the town was laid out in that pattern, that circle of Hecate that no one seemed to figure out the reason for. And if she squinted hard enough, she could see past the most distant building to the strange empty watchtowers that signaled the inner ring of the town, and whatever lay beyond that, at the center of the circle.

Riley wondered, not for the first time, what was at the center of the circle...and by extension, the center of this eerie little town with its empty homes and unnaturally quiet streets where only monsters roamed.

She'd gotten a fraction of a glimpse once, back when the Hunt had taken Rhoswen for their sacrifice five years ago; all she could remember was light and shadows and blood dripping into a lake that couldn't possibly exist in the center of a ghost town. The situation was compounded further by the fact that what little she could remember was was disjointed and fragmented from how emotionally distraught she'd been at the time, drowning in grief and fury with her thoughts on an unending loop of _Oh, God, this can't be happening, not here, anyone but her._

And then there had been a devastating wave of magic that had rippled out from that impossible lake and Riley's own magic had surged and writhed under her skin, burning like a thousand supernovas going off in her veins, and she'd blacked out, waking up soaking wet and shivering in the bunker.

Carmen had told her, once the worst of the shock wore off and Riley wasn't just staring blankly at everyone who spoke to her, that Riley had broughtherself back to the bunker. Apparently, she'd stumbled up to the two scouts that she herself had posted at the entrance earlier (before tearing off after Rhoswen), and garbled something at them about blood sacrifices, fae halflings, and someone named Belisama. And then she'd passed out, and remained dead to the world for ten days before finally waking up again.

Riley still didn't remember anything beyond that crashing wave of magic. If Carmen said that Riley had returned to the bunker under her own steam, Riley believed her. But she couldn't _remember_ it. Any of it. And she knew enough about magical backlash and energy overload to know that she possibly never _would_ , no matter how desperate she was to get back those missing moments.

Whatever had happened that day five years ago, her subconscious obviously considered it traumatizing enough so that only slivers of those memories slipped through to her conscious mind. It was annoying, but Riley knew better than to push. She knew herself well enough to know that her mental state was not precisely what one would call stable. She was high-functioning, sure, but she was an emotionally unstable mage with too much on her shoulders and she knew that if _something_ didn't change soon she was headed for some sort of snapping point. She wasn't a basket-case exactly, but the _potential_ was there, had been ever since her psychometry had started really blossoming during puberty and she had been forced to deal the assault of knowledge that she picked up from both the things and people she touched.

Memories of when she was fifteen came surging back with a vengeance, of that day when she'd sensed terrifying things from a horrifically twisted mind, and she forcefully shut those memories down (she didn't need to be scared of her psychometry anymore, after all, not when that ability had been so muted since coming here that she didn't even need to wear the enchanted focus bracelet she'd gotten as a gift for her eighteenth birthday), turning her thoughts to other things. Like how something in this realm _really_ needed to change if she and the others were to have any hope of turning their existence here into something more than just a desperate struggle to survive.

 _But maybe things are already changing_ , she thought idly to herself as she scrambled down the wall and snatched up her hare. Peter was here now. That was a big change, in and of itself. Sure, the Wild Hunt took people on a relatively regular basis, and more during certain parts of the year, but _Peter Hale_? Not just a werewolf, but a werewolf from a prominent family. It was a bit more of a high profile target than usual, even if Peter had been locked in Eichen House for some reason.

...And that was something else she intended to get to the bottom of, too, once Peter recovered a bit more from the drugs and the magical abduction; the Peter she'd known would never have been locked into a madhouse like Eichen House; he'd been clever and sarcastic and sometimes a bit devious, but not insane or excessively violent...she couldn't imagine what could have gone so wrong in the last ten years that had resulted in her Peter locked away like she had been.

 _Then again_ , Riley mused, _maybe taking a high profile target like Peter isn't really so strange_. The Hunt had taken her and Rhoswen, after all, and her sister had been the Emissary to the Hale Pack. _Maybe_ , she thought bitterly, now flat-out running through the streets back to the bunker because darkness was falling much more quickly than she liked, _the Wild Hunt just takes whoever the hell they want and to hell with the consequences._

What she really wanted to know, though, was _why_ they were taking people. Why take them, and why use them as blood sacrifices? What was the Wild Hunt trying to accomplish? Or maybe not the Hunt themselves...maybe _they_ answered to someone _else_ , just as the hounds and Sluagh answered to them? Either way, the need to know burned inside her like an eternal flame. That fire kept her warm even on the coldest and loneliest nights; even when everything seemed pointless and empty, the scorching desire to _understand_ still remained.

She drew on that fire now, using it to give her an extra boost of energy as she ran, boots pounding against the cobblestones as she hurtled through the curving streets in the darkening gloom.

She reached the entrance to the bunker just as true darkness set in, and wasted no time in yanking opening the door, rushing in, and slamming and locking it behind her, pouring as much energy as she could afford to lose into the dozens upon dozens of wards that were layered on the entrance.

She probably didn't need to shore up the wards like that, they were holding strong just as they had been for countless months, but it paid to err on the side of caution and paranoia. If a shadow hound had attacked her during the day, it was entirely possible that something might try a direct attack on the bunker. Nothing should be able to get past the wards (anything that tried would end up resembling a lightning-struck tree...at best), but she wasn't willing to take any chances. Not with all the people here counting on her to keep them safe. Not with Carmen here. Not with _Peter_ here, fresh from Eichen House and still as compelling as ever.

No, she would only ever take chances with her own safety; she would never, _never_ risk the lives of those she was meant to protect. The ones she was responsible for, and the ones she cared about. And the very few she _loved_. Those ones...she'd protect them with everything she had, because she valued them too much to do anything less.

She'd always been on the outskirts of things in the real world, never getting too close to people, and the same mostly held true here in _Tech na cinn Caillte_ as well, largely because the other Lost Ones didn't know what to make the mage who battled shadow hounds and survived to fight another day. The few people she became close to, though...there was very little she wouldn't do to protect them. After Rhoswen had been sacrificed, Riley hadn't let anyone else close, but Carmen had been stubborn, consistently there for her even at her worst times, even when she screamed and threw things and lashed out with her magic.

And Peter...

Peter had done the same for her, back... _before_. She'd been broken and hollow inside after getting out of Eichen House just after her seventeenth birthday, and even when her sister had brought her to the nature preserve to introduce her to the prestigious wolf pack she'd become Emissary for, Riley hadn't been able to scrounge up much enthusiasm, for anything really. It had been a totally different attitude, emptiness and apathy rather than the fury and wrath that had followed in the wake of Rose's death, but she'd definitely been just as broken, just in different ways.

But Peter had, for some reason, taken an interest in her. He'd sought her out from time to time, after pack meetings, and had needled at her until she'd actually engaged in a conversation with him, rather than just shrinking in on herself and averting her gaze. Somewhere along the way, their interactions had morphed into an actual friendship, pretty much the first true friendship Riley had ever had.

Even ignoring how her feelings for him had eventually grown far beyond friendship, she had an obligation to protect him just for that friendship alone. He'd treated her like a real person, at a time when she'd been struggling in a hundred different ways, scared and in pain and quietly out of control. He'd given her something to focus on, something to look forward to. He'd _anchored_ her, and she'd never forgotten it. Never forgotten _him_.

She'd never stopped loving him, even after all this time. Even after seeing Alan Deaton's blank face ten years ago after Rhoswen had gone to him about seeing the Wild Hunt and realizing that even _love_ couldn't help someone remember a would-be victim of the Hunt, she'd loved him. Even knowing that he was going to forget her, because if Alan couldn't remember Rhoswen when her sister was standing right in front of him barely a week after their engagement party, then there was no hope for Peter to remember Riley. Even then, she'd kept that love in her heart, because it was the most _real_ thing she'd ever felt, and the purest.

She'd buried it, over the years. She'd had to, or she'd have gone insane from the loss. But that love had always been there, deep down. And now with Peter _here_ , in this realm, a victim of the Wild Hunt ten years after she'd been ripped from a life she'd finally decided was worth living...

She didn't know what it meant. If it meant anything at all. But she wasn't going to risk losing a chance to find out. So she poured extra magic into the wards, determined to keep the darkness out.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: So, this chapter ended up being all Peter's POV. I didn't originally mean for him to have the entire chapter, but he's just so much fun to write I couldn't seem to help myself. XD Anyway, Peter's by himself for the first half of the chapter, then Riley comes back and they...well, snipe at each other, mostly. XD Enjoy!_

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

* * *

"Here," Carmen said, stopping in front of a door that had a triquetra written on it in chalk. "You'll be staying in this room until Riley picks something else." Then, suddenly and without warning, she yanked open the door and shoved Peter inside. "Laters!" she called in cheerfully before pulling the door shut again.

Peter spun around and growled at the closed door, then froze as the scents in the room caught up to him. Magic and petrichor and a dozen other little scents that added up to Riley. He'd known her for less than a day, but a scent like hers was distinctive, unmistakable.

Which behooved the question, what room had Carmen just dumped him in?

Turning back around, he was startled to see a medium-sized room with a sleeping bag spread out on the floor in one corner of the room with stacks of books piles up against the rest of the walls, with the exception of the wall across from the door, which had what looked like a large map of the town done in chalk on it, with the bunker and a few other locations marked with stars. Looking around, he noticed several notebooks and sketch pads scattered around, and he wondered once more where odd little things like that came from, because he highly doubted that the Wild Hunt brought along supplies for the people they abducted and erased. Then again, for all he knew, maybe they did; Riley had mentioned Lost Ones being taken as sacrifices sometimes, maybe the Hunt brought supplies to keep the ones not taken from openly revolting against their situation?

Although he had to admit, other than Riley and Carmen, none of the people he'd seen upon his arrival had seemed lively enough to stage any sort of revolt. Still, he didn't see any other way for those types of supplies to exist here, in possession of these people.

Or maybe, Peter theorized, those empty houses up above in the town might not always have been empty. Maybe there had been other people in the town once, people before the Wild Hunt had brought the Lost Ones to this realm. It would, he reasoned, explain some of the anachronistic clothing he'd seen on some of the Lost Ones; it'd also explain why some of the books piled around the room didn't seem to be in modern English...or sometimes not English at all.

Still, there was no way for him to either confirm or disprove his theories at the moment, so he shelved those thoughts for the time-being, instead focusing his attention on the room itself. Curious about the woman who called this room hers, the woman who'd swooped in and saved his ass from dangers he hadn't even known about, he prowled over to the closest little pile of books, kneeling down to pick up the sketchbook that was resting atop an an old bestiary that seemed to be written in Welsh.

He was surprised to see that the first few sketches were filled with sketches and doodles of Beacon Hills. Or rather, Beacon Hills of ten years ago. The town hadn't changed that much in the intervening years, but here and there Peter saw proof that the Beacon Hills in these pages wasn't the one he'd last walked through. There was a sketch of an ice cream shop that had closed down two years previously, and a drawing of the massive oak tree that had stood outside town hall until it had been blown down in that freak thunderstorm last spring.

He also saw numerous sketches of the Hale house, _his family's_ house, from before the fire. It almost physically hurt to see his home on the pages in front of him, rendered in such exquisite detail, and it took a concentrated effort to keep his claws from slipping out and cutting into the sketchbook.

Chest tight and throat aching, he quickly turned the page, almost desperate to get away from those images of his family home before everything had gone so wrong.

He nearly dropped the sketchpad when he saw the next page: a detailed portrait of _himself_. It was him in what seemed to be his early twenties, his face at that interesting stage between teenager and full-grown man; a bit like that new book genre people were bandying about, what was it called, new adult? It was him in that stage.

What truly astounded him, though, even more than the existence of this sketch to begin with, was the level of detail in the drawing. The angle of his eyebrows, the line of his jaw, the slight upward tilt in his mouth as his lips lifted in a faint smile...it took his breath away, the level of care that must have gone into this rendering.

Then he turned to the next page and _did_ drop the sketchpad, because it had another sketch of him, this time with his sister Talia at his side, beautiful and strong.

The sketch after that was him with a teenage Laura, and after that was a drawing of him with a young Derek, his nephew's cheeks chubby in a way that pegged him as middle-school age.

The next drawing was of Peter holding Cora as a toddler, and the one after that one was of their entire immediate family: Peter, Talia, the kids, and even Talia's husband Aaron. There were a couple drawings beyond that that depicted a handful of Hale cousins and the like, but most sketches were of Peter and the core of his family.

Heart pounding in his chest, he dropped the sketchpad back down onto the pile of books. Confused and conflicted, he just stood there for a moment, his whole body trembling.

After a moment, though, his insatiable curiosity got the better of him, and he reached out with shaking hands to pick up another notebook.

This one contained drawings of places he only vaguely recognized, since he'd barely left Beacon Hills in the last few years; San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Park, Coit's Tower, Alcatraz. More sketches of places in Seattle, and then a handful of the streets and landmarks of Sacraento. Cities where Riley had lived or visited, he assumed, but couldn't be sure without asking; for all he knew she'd just picked the images at random from a magazine and recreated them (an admittedly unlikely option, since he saw no such magazines around, but still).

The next notebook he picked up had sketches of a beautiful long-haired woman who resembled Riley just enough for Peter to make the connection and realize that the bombshell depicted in the drawings must be the Rhoswen he'd heard both Carmen and Riley herself mention.

There were sketches of Rhoswen smiling, scowling, reading a book. A couple drawings of her with a younger Alan Deaton, and then a few more of a teenage Rhoswen with two people who Peter assumed were her and Riley's parents; a woman with wavy hair and smiling eyes and a tall man with dark eyes and a strong jaw.

There were a few more sketches of Riley's parents, but the drawings seemed different somehow, lacking the level of detail he'd seen in the others; it was like Riley hadn't been able to recall as much about them, like the memories were fading for her, and sketches reflected that.

He couldn't help but wonder if the reason she'd sketched them in the first place was to attempt to hold on to her memories of them. If that's what she was doing with all these sketchbooks; chronicling the things she'd seen and the people she'd known in the hopes of not losing those moments to the passing of time.

It made sense. So much must have happened to her since coming here; it wasn't surprising that she would want to try and preserved memories of her life before this place.

He briefly wondered why there weren't any sketches of Eichen House, then realized that those memories probably weren't ones Riley wanted to hang onto; God knew he'd forget the time he'd spent there if he could. Of course, it was equally possible that Riley _had_ done drawings of that madhouse from hell and he just hadn't come across that particular sketchpad yet; that was a possibility, too.

Before he had a chance to snoop around anymore, though, he heard footsteps coming down the hall outside, accompanied by muffled voices that he recognized. Calm and amused and with the faintest hint of a Hispanic accent: Carmen. Annoyed, indignant, and sarcastic: Riley.

"You said to get him settled into a room," Carmen was saying, her voice just a little too cheerful to be without suspicion.

"I said _a_ room," Riley snapped back. "Not _my_ room!"

A low, melodious laugh. "I don't see what you're so upset about," Carmen replied. "You've been missing the guy for a solid decade; what harm can come from sharing a room now that he's here?"

Riley grumbled an impressive stream of aggravated curses before huffing out a short sigh. "I've decided that I'm mad at you," she announced, sounding just the slightest bit sulky. "I haven't figured out how to get back at you yet, but it's coming, I promise."

Carmen just laughed again, and Peter had to admit that even though the sound of it was distorted by passing through the thick walls and door, it was a nice laugh, genuine and uplifting and the warmth of it made him start to understand why Riley seemed to value Carmen's friendship so much; genuine laughter must be something hard to come by here. "Sure thing, Ri, whatever you say."

The women talked for a few minutes more, bickering back and forth, then Riley finally came into her room, kicking the door shut behind her and crossing her arms as she noticed Peter standing by a stack of her books with a sketchpad held lightly in his hands.

"Most gentlemen would refrain from snooping in a lady's private things," was the first thing Riley said, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. "But then I suppose you've never been the standard definition of 'gentlemen', have you?"

Peter found himself a bit irritated at that, but decided not to rise to the bait. "Can you blame me for being curious about my rescuer?" he asks instead, infusing his words with some of the charm and charisma he'd relied on once upon a time.

Riley just rolled her eyes, either immune to his charm or oblivious to it. "You always were very inquisitive; I suppose I should be happy that you've retained that quality over the years. Maybe you haven't grown too old to be clever after all."

Peter opened his mouth to respond, reconsidered what he'd been about to say, thought of something else to say, and then reconsidered that, too. In the end, he blurted out something he'd actually been planning to _not_ ask about. "You didn't do any sketches of Eichen House."

Riley went so stiff it was like she'd turned to stone, her hands clenching into fists so tightly that Peter caught a faint whiff of salty blood in the air where her nails dug into her palms and winced. "How do you know that I was there?" she asked, her voice tight and full of pain. "And don't you dare say that you _remembered_ it," she snapped, her voice almost a snarl. "Because I see the look in your eyes, Peter, and it's not remembrance."

"Carmen mentioned it," Peter said, swallowing hard and feeling the slightest stirring of guilt for throwing Riley's friend under the bus so immediately; the guilt faded quickly enough, though, because what else could he do but tell Riley the truth? It wasn't like she wouldn't figure it out herself anyway, she wasn't an idiot. "Something about your...psychometry?"

Riley gave him a cold look that actually made the hairs on the back of his neck raise up. "We're not talking about this, Peter. Drop it."

But even though his instincts were strongly suggesting that he pick another topic of conversation, he didn't heed them. "Don't think I will," he drawled. "Imagine my surprise when I learned that both of us have spent quality time in Beacon Hills' most exclusive madhouse."

Riley actually snapped her teeth at him in a very wolfish gesture of warning and aggravation (he assumed it was something she'd picked up during the time she'd spent with his family, though he couldn't help but wonder why and how she'd retained it after all these years). "I'm serious, Peter," she told him, eyes darkening like threatening storm clouds. "Drop it."

"Or what?" he challenged.

She glared at him, one hand twitching like she wanted to either cast a spell at him or simply punch him. In the end, though, she did neither, and instead just shook her head and walked over to her sleeping bag in the corner, kneeling down to fuss with the zipper. "Dinner's cooking now," she said in a very sudden subject change. "It'll be done in a couple hours, so I suggest we try to get some sleep before mealtime."

Peter blinked at her, thrown for a loop by how she'd blatantly sidestepped his questions. "You realize," he said slowly, "that I'm not going to stop asking you questions just because you don't want to answer them. Right?"

Riley huffed out a small sigh, yanking on the zipper a little harder than necessary as she opened her sleeping bag. "You realize," she returned, her voice rough, "that even if you keep asking questions, I might not give you the answers you want to hear?"

Peter considered that for a moment, continuing to watch Riley as she stood back up and crossed the room to peer at the chalk map on the far wall. For about ten seconds, he thought about dropping the subject. He dismissed that notion almost as quickly as it came, and instead opted for a more direct, albeit possibly brutal, method. "Did you ever encounter an asshat named Valack during your stay?" he asked. "Or was he not there at the time? Because I was hoping you might be able to tell me what he-" Peter broke off, distracted by Riley tripping over her own feet, reaching out a hand to brace herself against the wall. "So you do know him, then," he remarked, and it definitely wasn't a question.

"Valack is _still_ around?" she demanded, sounding outraged even as her scent twisted with fear and anger. "Does no one have the guts to chop his head off? Even after all this time?"

"All this time," Peter repeated. "So he _was_ there when you were."

"He was stuck in there even _before_ I got in there," Riley grumbled.

Peter blinked, crunching the numbers in his head. "So he's spent over a decade in that place?"

"Almost fifteen years, actually, at least that I can be sure of. But, yeah. Seems like he's been there for quite some time," Riley agreed. "Accounts for his charming personality, don't you think?" she added sarcastically. "I _did_ meet him while I was there," she explained at last, looking at Peter with an unreadable expression on her face. "I did a two year stint in that hellhole, and I shared a cell with him for a little while. Of course," she went on, "it doesn't take a genius to realize that tossing a psychometric mage into a small enclosed space with a sadistic mind-raper is not a good idea. Pretty sure we lasted about a month before trying to kill each other," she added thoughtfully, brow furrowed. "They separated us after that, gave me my own cell."

"Wow," Peter said, and meant it. "That must have been quite the fight."

"It was definitely something," Riley remarked, lips curving in a wry smile as the shadows of the past faded from her eyes. "Now, seriously, there's going to be a huge crowd once the stew's done cooking, so we should rest up now before it's finished."

"Stew," Peter echoed, then recalled the bits of conversation he'd picked up on earlier. "That's what you went out to hunt, something for dinner?"

Riley nodded in confirmation. "Yep. Just one moss hare, but it's big enough to give us enough servings for everyone."

"Moss hare?" Peter scowled. "What's a moss hare?"

Riley wrinkled her nose at him in a way that was, quite frankly, adorable. "A hare covered in moss, doofus," she said, tone exasperated.

Peter rolled his eyes. "Well, excuse me for asking," he said with a snort, trying very hard to _not_ picture what such a creature might look like, since doing so would almost definitely put him off eating it. Then, "You caught it yourself?" He could definitely get behind a woman who was self-sufficient enough to go out and catch her own dinner; it bothered him that she was stuck in a place where she _had_ to do it, but it was admirable that she'd adapted to her situation and found the means to survive and provide for not just herself but others as well.

"Yeah," Riley said. "Before my sister and I got taken by the Hunt," she told him, each word carefully measured, "I knew a guy who taught me how to snare rabbits." She gave a wry smile. "You-" She shook her head sharply, cutting herself off before continuing. " _He_ ," she went on, "used to tease me about how I'd feel so guilty for catching them. Called me a crybaby and everything."

Peter stared at her, trying to reconcile the idea of a Riley who cried over bunnies with the woman in front of him who hadn't hesitated to slash the throat of the shadow hound that had attacked them. "Seriously?" he asked, unable to mask the disbelief in his tone.

"Seriously," Riley agreed, her tone solemn even as her eyes sparkled. Then she gave him another unreadable look before heaving a sigh and crossing the room to a medium-sized steamer trunk that was wedged between two towering stacks of books. Opening the trunk, she rummaged inside for a bit before straightening up and turning back around to literally throw something fairly large in Peter's face.

Catching it, he was mildly surprised to see that it was a bundle of blankets. "What...?"

"You _need_ to sleep," Riley said, her tone a peculiar mix of irritation, concern, and fondness. "You're exhausted, both mentally and physically, and you need to let your mind and body rest."

Peter instinctively bristled at the implication of _you're weak right now_ that her words carried. "I'm fine," he snapped.

She laughed at him. _Laughed_. At him. "Sure you are," she told him, sounding _and_ looking incredibly amused. "The bags under your eyes and the tremors in your limbs are all _totally_ on purpose, right? Going for that strung out I-just-caught-a-red-eye-flight look?"

He growled at her.

She rolled her eyes, unimpressed. "Stop being so damn proud, Peter Hale. You've been through a lot; there's no shame in admitting that you need a breather."

Logically, he could acknowledge the truth in her words. But even so... "I really don't think that I-"

"Peter," Riley said, her tone suddenly sharp, "you can either fall asleep on your own, or I can hit you upside the head and put you out that way. Your choice."

Peter just gaped at her for a moment, unable to get his tone working to fire back a response. Finally, he settled for growling at her one more time...then he retreated to the corner of the room farthest from Riley's sleeping bag and got to work on spreading out the blankets she'd given him.

Riley, for whatever reason, didn't comment on his actions, though he caught a whiff of her scent as he worked: surprise, satisfaction, and that same exasperated affection that always seemed to creep into her scent when he was around.

He inhaled carefully one more time, breathing in her scent and all its intriguing flavors, then abruptly scowled, baffled by his own actions. Frustrated with both himself and the utterly ridiculous situation he'd landed himself in, he threw himself down onto his makeshift bed of blankets and drew the last quilt up over not just his legs and torso but his head as well, hoping to block out Riley's scent. It didn't quite work, since even the quilt was saturated with the redheads scent, albeit stale and faint since she evidently hadn't used this quilt herself in some time.

He did finally managed to fall into an uneasy slumber, darkness settling in around him as his weariness caught up with him.

He was only vaguely surprised when his uncomfortable almost-nightmares of Eichen House transformed into something else, something different. The new dreamscape felt suspiciously like the bizarre flashback he'd had earlier, when he'd seen the tattoo on Riley's back and it had triggered something in the back of his mind.

 _He was lounging comfortably on the couch in the living room (and wasn't that just utterly bizarre and heart-wrenching, sitting in the living room of his family home, which had very definitely burned to the ground years ago), holding a hardcover book in his hand._

" _Peter!" Talia's voice was echoing through the house as she sought him out. "Peter, where are you?"_

 _He rolled his eyes. "In here, sister dear," he called back, "as you'd know if you opened your ears for a minute." Honestly, even with their entire Pack residing here, it wasn't **that** hard to track down someone's specific heartbeat. _

_Talia strode into the living room and fixed him in a look that was somehow stern, exasperated, and amused all at once; Peter liked to think of it as the Big Sister Look. "And what are you doing in here?" she asked him_

 _He arched an eyebrow and held up his book. "Reading."_

 _She rolled her eyes. "What I meant," she said, clearly trying to project an aura of patience, "is why are you **in here reading** when I distinctly recall telling you to be **outside with me** so we can greet our new Emissary?"_

 _Peter blinked at his sister and glanced over at the clock on the mantel. "That time already?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "I thought she wasn't getting here until this evening."_

 _Talia shrugged, and for a moment she was just a woman trying her best rather than an Alpha who couldn't afford to show weakness. "She did say she was eager to get started. Although I think her impatience has more to do with finally coming to Beacon Hills than anything else."_

 _Peter hummed in agreement. "Are you sure it's such a good idea?" he asked his sister, setting aside his book and springing to his feet. "Agreeing to take on a Druid we know almost nothing about?"_

 _Talia gave a slight sigh as they headed for the front door. "A good idea? No, probably not. But we can't go without an Emissary, and Dante wasn't even close to done with Alan's training."_

 _(Dante, Peter recalled, was their Emissary who had gotten killed in an omega attack a few months before; his apprentice Alan Deaton hadn't had the skills yet to ascend to the position of Emissary, so the Hale Pack had been searching for an adequate replacement. Why hadn't Peter remembered this before? Why hadn't be remembered the Emissary they'd had after Dante and before Deaton?)_

" _Besides," Talia went on, "the woman clearly wants to be in Beacon Hills so she can be close to her sister. There's nothing wrong with that."_

" _Pretty sure there's something wrong somewhere," Peter remarked, "since her sister's locked away in a nuthouse."_

 _Talia gave a low growl and slanted him a chiding look. "Don't judge so hastily," she scolded him. "We don't know the details of why the girl's in Eichen House. And we aren't going to pester our Emissary about it," she added sternly._

" _We aren't?" Peter asked, pasting a too-innocent look on his face._

" _No," she said severely, "we're not." She gave him one more warning look and then they were stepping out onto the porch, both of them looking over to where a young woman with long red hair stood waiting for them on the front lawn. She seemed to be around Talia's age, and carried herself with a confident air that was only married by the faint shadows under her eyes that indicated a recent lack of rest._

" _Greetings, Alpha Hale," the woman said, her voice calm and her heartbeat steady as she inclined her head in a deep nod._

" _Good afternoon, Rhoswen Crowe," Talia replied, a faint smile gracing her lips as she gave a slight nod in return. "It's nice to finally meet you in person."_

* * *

 _ **A/N:** And...that's the chapter! Drop me a review if you've got a second, to let me know what you liked/didn't like/want to see more of/etc. Feedback makes me deliriously happy. ;D_


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Hiya! Welcome to the sixth chapter! This time, we get a flashback from Riley! Hooray! And then another big chunk of Peter, because I apparently can't go for too long without writing him. XD Also, this chapter has Riley's full first name in it! See if you can spot it. ;D (For anyone reading this on a03, it shouldn't be hard, since technically you can get her full name from the character tags. But still. XD)._

* * *

 **Chapter 6**

* * *

Riley found her gaze drifting over to Peter's sleeping form more often than she would have expected, and decided that such behavior was annoying. Yes, she hadn't seen him in ten years and yes, she'd missed him terribly...but that was no excuse to act like a self-conscious schoolgirl.

 _It's just Peter_ , she told herself insistently. _There's no reason to be so nervous. It's just Peter._

Except it wasn't just Peter, was it? No, he was different. Her Peter, plus ten years. She'd have to get to know him all over again, and vice versa. It was irritating and heart-wrenching all at once.

"Peter Hale," she murmured softly, eyeing the way he buried under her quilt one last time before wrenching her gaze away to stare at the ceiling instead. "How much fun the gods must be having, watching us run around in hopeless circles again and again." Truly, it was like a sitcom with a dash of supernatural angst and tragedy.

She could still remember the first time she'd heard Peter's name. As was generally the case with life-changing moments, she'd considered it largely insignificant at the time. Just another conversation, no big deal. Well, kind of a big deal, but not for Peter-related reasons.

 _When the orderlies first dragged her out of her cell for a visitation, she was too heavily drugged to register any emotion other than a sort of vague surprise that she even **had** a visitor. _

_She hadn't been allowed any outside contact for the last few days after her most recent "incident" (if kicking the orderly with the skeevy leer and wandering hands in the crotch could be deemed an "incident"; personally, she viewed it as a service to humanity, but what did she know, she was crazy, after all). And even if she'd been allowed to get in touch with anyone in the outside world, all she had was Rhoswen, who was probably still in Seattle. Or had it been San Francisco? Or Sacramento? It was all so fuzzy and jumbled up in her head, she couldn't be sure of where they'd been when everything had suddenly gone so wrong. Somewhere in California, she reasoned, since no one would have shipped her out of state for the kind of "special care" they claimed she needed; that kind of transfer would be too much paperwork and hassle. So, the so-called echo house was in California. Somewhere._

 _She put up a token resistance as she was manhandled out of her cell and down the corridor to the visitation rooms, but even as out of it as she was she knew better than to fight back **too** much; she didn't want to earn herself a second (or was it third now?) sedative. _

_After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a handful of minutes, they shuffled her into a new room and plopped her down into a cold metal chair that looked like it had lived in an interrogation room in its past life. The orderlies escorting her took advantage of her momentary distraction over her new surroundings to grab her wrists (and even through the fog of the drugs, she could still pick up on the psychic impressions that were battering at the edges of her mind from the physical contact with the two men, disgust and boredom and sadistic amusement thrumming at the edge of her awareness)._

 _Then they slapped some padded cuffs onto her wrists and chained her to the table. Had she been a little more clearheaded, the absurdity of it would have made her laugh._

 _It wasn't like chaining her up would **stop** her if she really wanted to hurt someone; she had her magic for that, even if it was unpredictable and hard to control even when sober._

 _Hell, the only reason she'd used a knife to defend herself against that man in Sacramento, (killed him, she'd **killed** him, and they'd put her in here because her plea of self-defense hinging on "My psychic powers told me that he was a serial killer and I was his next victim" hadn't gone over well with the judge and jury) was because it had all happened too quickly for her to do anything other than react instinctively and grab the closest weapon available._

 _So, yes, chaining her up was pointless. She didn't bother to tell **them** that, though; let them have the placebo comfort of shackling her if they wanted to, she didn't care. Much. (Okay, so that was a lie, she did care...but she did her best to pretend that she didn't, because it was easier to not go truly insane that way.)_

" _How many drugs are they giving you?" a familiar voice demanded indignantly as the door across the room opened to let in her visitor._

 _She blinked several times to make sure that she was actually seeing what she thought she was. (She was pretty sure of the things she saw, but sometimes the medications they gave her made her confused, and made her imagine things that weren't there.) "Rose?" she croaked out, her voice barely more than a cracked whisper. "What are you doing here?"_

" _Visiting my wrongfully imprisoned baby sister," Rhoswen answered, shooting the two orderlies matching death glares as she came to sit down on the other side of the table. "And you didn't answer my question."_

 _Riley tried to lift her hands up to rub away some of the blurry drowsiness in her eyes, but the chains halted her mid-motion and she grumbled a curse. "I've lost count," she told her sister honestly, flinching ever so slightly when Rose got her there-will-be-hell-for-this face. Riley didn't like seeing her sister so angry, so she tried to ease the tension. "I'm a dangerous killer, remember?" she said in a light tone, wiggling her fingers dramatically. "They're just terrified that I'll slaughter them in their sleep, so they give me all the heavy-duty stuff." She scrunched up her face and waggled her eyebrows for good measure, and was **finally** rewarded with Rhoswen caving and giving a slight chuckle, the scorching hot fury in her eyes dimming somewhat._

" _Oh, Rhiannon," Rose said, reaching out across the table to grasp her manacled hands. "We're going to get through this, I swear. I'm going to get you out of here."_

 _She shook her head, a low and bitter laugh escaping her chapped lips. "You heard the judge's verdict: institutionalization until I reach age of majority at eighteen." She tried not to panic at the thought of three years of being trapped in this hellhole; the past three **weeks** had been torturous enough. But three **years**? (Well, two years, ten months, three weeks, and six days, but who was counting?)_

" _It's going to be okay," Rhoswen said again, her voice fierce. "I've finally convinced a Pack to let me be their Emissary. And you'll never guess whose Pack it is!"_

 _For the first time in weeks, she felt true curiosity stirring in her veins. "Who?" she asked Rhoswen._

" _Hale," Rose told her in an excited whisper. "Talia Hale's Pack, can you believe it? I just met her in person for the first time today."_

" _Wow," was the first thing to pop out of her mouth. Even sleep-deprived and drugged to the gills, she knew about the Hale family. They were a prestigious werewolf family that went back generations; if werewolves had royalty, the Hales would definitely qualify as such._

" _What was she like?" she asked, curiosity flaring higher as she contemplated what it might mean, her older sister being the Emissary to such a powerful Pack as the Hales._

" _Confident," Rhoswen replied. "Powerful, but without too much pride." She seemed to mull something over for a moment. "She seemed kind," Rose said at last. "Firm and strong, but kind."_

" _An Alpha with compassion," she murmured, tugging absently at the chains holding her in place. "Wish I could've met her."_

" _You will," Rose said at once. "I'll introduce you as soon as we get you out. Or sooner," she added eagerly, "if you don't mind her visiting you here."_

 _She scowled at her sister. "Why would she care enough to come visit me?" she asked, thoroughly baffled and just a little bit alarmed. "Never mind," she said before her sister could answer. "What about the rest of the Pack? Meet anyone else yet?"_

 _Rhoswen nodded, her vibrant red hair shining in the fluorescent lighting. "Her brother Peter was there, he's like her second in command or enforcer or something. And then I also met her husband Aaron, once they decided I was safe enough to let inside the house."_

 _Talia, Peter, and Aaron. She filed their names away in the back of her mind, out of reach of the drugs and 'therapy' the doctors administered here; she may not have been firing on all cylinders, but parts of her mind were still her own, and she intended to keep it that way, particularly where information pertaining to her sister's Pack was concerned._

" _It sounds like you're off to a good start," she said at last to Rhoswen, suddenly self-consciously aware of the fact that she'd let the silence stretch on just a little too long. "The Hales are a strong Pack; they'll be even stronger now, with you as their Emissary."  
_

 _Rhoswen gave a slightly tired smile. "Just imagine how much stronger they'll be when they have **both** of us, Rhiannon. Won't that be a sight?"_

 _No Pack will ever want someone as broken as me, is what she almost says but doesn't. Saying things like that always makes Rhoswen so sad, her eyes tearing up like she feels personally responsible for how messed up her baby sister's existence is._

 _She hates, truly **hates** , making Rhoswen cry, especially over her. So instead of saying what's inside her heart, she just smiles, and nods, and says, "Sure."_

* * *

Peter woke up to the sensation of someone shaking his shoulder, and he instinctively lashed out with his claws. He belatedly realized that anyone shaking him awake was not likely to be an immediate threat, since they could've just as easily slit his throat with him none the wiser.

Thankfully, Riley didn't seem to have been surprised by his actions; she easily sprung away, out of the reach of his claws, and then just tucked her hands into her pockets and looked at him, her gray eyes watchful but not wary.

He sat up slowly and carefully, flexing his fingers and sheathing his claws. "Did I hurt you?" he asked, even though he was certain he hadn't; he couldn't smell any fresh blood, just Riley's usual scent. Still, it was only polite to ask, especially considering the fact that he could have disemboweled her unintentionally just seconds before.

"No," Riley said, shaking her head. Then she gave a faint smile that was almost a smirk but not quite. "My reflexes seem to be faster than yours, Peter; you really _are_ getting old."

"Shut up," he grumbled, struggling to disentangle himself from his borrowed quilt. "Did you wake me up just to poke fun at my age?"

"Not _just_ to poke fun at your age," she returned with a sly smile. "Dinner's almost ready," she added more seriously. "We should hurry and head over to the mess hall if we want good portions."

Peter stood up, feeling disproportionately satisfied when his legs held him up with no unsteadiness or dizziness whatsoever; it looked like his werewolf healing had gone to work on the drugs that had been lingering in his system. He still felt a bit shaky and slow just in general, but everything was sharper, and clearer; his thoughts weren't quite so fuzzy or jumbled up anymore.

"You're the one who _caught_ dinner," Peter said as Riley impatiently hustled him towards the door and then out into the hall. "Shouldn't you get a good portion automatically?"

Riley gave a dismissive shrug. "I probably _could_ insist on it if I really wanted to," she admitted, steering him down another hallway as they reached a three-way intersection. "But that sort of thing causes resentment and it's just not worth it to aggravate anyone, not when I need them to trust me."

Peter nodded, then scowled. "Wait," he said, holding up a hand. "Why do you need them to trust you? _You're_ the one protecting _them_ , right? Shouldn't that already make them inclined to trust you?"

"You'd think so," Riley said wryly, "but unfortunately most of the other Lost Ones seem to view me as a necessary evil. I make them uncomfortable," she explained seeing Peter's indignant expression. "What I am, what I can do. Most of them were normal people before they were taken by the Hunt, so magic scares them. They don't trust it. Ergo, they don't trust me."

"That's so incredibly stupid," Peter blurted out before he could stop himself. "I bet a third of them didn't understand how their fancy computers really worked before they got brought here, but they trusted _those_. This is no different; why mistrust something just because you don't understand it?"

Riley gave a snort of amusement, and Peter caught a faint whiff of gratitude and appreciation in her scent just before she spoke. "I have no idea," she replied. "Then again, I'm the unstable and untrustworthy mage, so what hell do I know?" She elbowed him in the side to redirect him towards a set of double doors that had the smell of meat and herbs wafting out of them. "Here's the mess hall; just follow my lead and try not to antagonize anyone, okay?"

"Who, me?" Peter looked at her with wide eyes. "Antagonize someone?"

Riley rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything, instead turning to hold open the doors for him.

He slipped into the mess hall, and saw pretty much what he'd been expecting: tables and chairs arranged in a semi-organized but mostly haphazard manner. The only difference between this dining hall and any other he'd ever seen was the impressive fire pit in the center of the room. Currently, there was a large cauldron of stew simmering above the fire, suspended in the air on a makeshift platform made out of some sort of metallic mesh.

"Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble," Riley said in a dramatically fake accent, her voice just low enough so that only Peter heard her. Then she grabbed him by the elbow and tugged him along with her as she approached the growing crowd surrounding the fire pit.

As they got closer to the line that was forming, Peter saw a man in a leather apron working at the cauldron, doling out ladlefuls of stew into chipped ceramic and wooden bowls.

"That's Gustav," Riley told him in a whisper. "The Wild Hunt brought him here...damn, almost six years ago now? Maybe even seven? Anyway," she went on, waving a hand dismissively as if the difference of a single year was negligible, "he was a hunter before coming here. Our kind of hunter," she added, putting just enough emphasis into her words to get the point across: this Gustav wasn't just a regular hunter, but a _hunter_. Like the Argents.

"Don't you dare try and hurt him," Riley said suddenly, her voice sharp as she turned to look at him, her stormy gaze fixating on where his claws had popped out of his nailbeds. "He's not a threat to you; he helps me and Carmen manage things here."

Peter nearly stumbled in his stride he was so startled by that proclamation. "You trust a _hunter_ to have your back?" he hissed at her.

" _Former_ hunter," Riley snapped back, eyes flashing dangerously. "As in, was a hunter once, but is no longer."

"And how do you know that for sure?" Peter asked disgustedly. "Did you just _believe_ him when he told you so?"

"Yes," she said, kicking him in the shin as he scoffed at her. " _Yes_ , because the Hunt crippled him when they brought him here and he can barely walk on his own, let alone do any of the activity that true hunting requires. Besides," she added in a slightly more cheerful tone, "he had a thing for my sister, despite the age difference. So he knows better than to lie to me by now."

Peter frowned a bit at that, not sure what one thing had to do with the other (also, a hunter crushing on a Druid?), but circled back around to the first part of her statement. "Crippled? Crippled how?"

Riley just shook her head and gave a slightly pained smile, her scent spiking with sympathy and regret. "You'll see once we get closer," was all she told him.

And he did. Oh, he certainly did, and he couldn't suppress the instinctive wince he gave when he saw the other man's left leg.

Or rather, what _had been_ his leg, once upon a time. Now it instead resembled a crude facsimile of a leg, like a drawing done by someone with no artistic experience and no knowledge or understanding of how a leg was supposed to look and work. It was obvious from looking at the limb in question that the bone had not just been broken, but _shattered_. And Peter caught glimpses of pale scar tissue trough the rips in Gustav's jeans, which seemed to rather strongly imply that when his leg bones had broken they'd erupted _out of his skin_.

There was a brace made out of strips of wood and cloth wrapped around his misshapen leg from just above his knee to just above the ankle of his boot, and Peter found himself wondering if Gustav had cobbled together the brace himself or if Riley or someone else had made it for him. Peter also spotted a wooden crutch leaning against the bench Gustav was sitting on as he ladled out helping of soup, and any lingering doubts he had about the hunter's infirmity faded away.

"I know it's hard for you," Riley said in a low voice as the line moved forward and they drew closer to Gustav, "but _try_ not to be a _complete_ asshole, okay?"

Peter couldn't decide whether he was amused or offended by her words, and before he had a chance to make up his mind it was their turn next at the serving table and he was face to face with former hunter Gustav.

The other man seemed to be in his late forties or early fifties (which helped Peter finally understand what Riley had been saying about the age difference between Gustav and Rhoswen), with a thick head of hair that was a visual definition of salt and pepper coloring. His eyes were sharp and shrewd as he noticed Peter at Riley's side, and the slight downward tilt to his mouth indicated that his initial assessment of Peter was not a favorable one.

And sure enough... " _This_ is the one you risked your neck for?" Gustav demanded, setting his ladle aside in favor of crossing his arms over his chest as he gave Peter a thoroughly unimpressed look. "God Almighty, Crowe, and here I thought you had a good head on your shoulders."

Riley didn't seem the slightest bit put out by Gustav's distinctly unwelcoming attitude. If anything, it seemed to please her; she gave a wide grin. "Aw, come on, Gus, don't be like that. After I brought you that nice fat moss hare and everything?"

Gustav huffed out an aggravated sigh. "What if you'd gotten your stupid ass killed off for good, Crowe? There'd have been no hare for dinner tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after that. We'd starve to death waiting for you to come back. Except, oh yeah, you wouldn't come back _because you'd be dead_."

"Gus isn't always quite this cranky," Riley informed Peter in a cheerful tone. "He just gets a bit fussy sometimes, that's all. So don't be too frightened by this tough guy thing he's got going on right now."

Peter bristled. "Frightened?" he said with a scoff. "Of _him_?" He unsheathed his claws in a dismissive flicking motion. "As if."

Gustav shot him another glare, the kind that reminded Peter of an angry mother bear sizing up a threat to her cubs as she thought of the best way to disembowel the enemy in question. "You planning on introducing me to your new boyfriend, Crowe, or should I just file him away as 'random werewolf with no social skills'?"

Riley seemed to think something over for a moment, then nodded to herself after looking back and forth between them for another few seconds. "Peter, this is Gustav Kardos. Gus, this is Peter; the Hunt just brought him in from Beacon Hills."

"Beacon Hills, huh..." Gustav seemed to ponder that for a minute before his eyes widened. "Wait a minute. Peter _Hale_?" He turned curious eyes to Riley. " _Your_ Peter?"

Peter blinked, taken aback by how similar Gustav's reaction was to Carmen's. He opened his mouth to comment on it (and by 'comment' he meant 'demand an explanation'), but Riley beat him to it.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" she demanded, looking irked. "He's not mine!"

Peter froze in place as he heard the distinctive skip in her heartbeat indicating a lie. _He's not mine_ , she'd said, and yet it was a lie? He didn't understand, couldn't wrap his head around it, what her words implied. He was _maybe_ willing to acknowledge that he _might_ have known her once, before she and her sister had been taken by the Wild Hunt...but even then, he couldn't fathom being anything to her other than a passing acquaintance, even if her older sister had been his Pack's Emissary like in his dream. Even if he'd apparently held her hand when she'd gotten that fantastic tattoo on her back. Because Peter had never been particularly social, preferring to stick close to his family, and he just couldn't picture a time during which he would have spent any significant amount of time with Riley Crowe, regardless of her tenuous connection to the Pack through her sister.

 _Maybe you're just not remembering things right_ , a voice in the back of his mind whispered, but he shoved it away before the doubt had a chance to take root.

Gustav, for his part, looked torn between sympathy, amusement, and annoyance, each emotion flickering quickly across his face before fell back into being gruff. "Well, whatever he is to you, make sure he doesn't stir up too much trouble, alright? We've got enough to worry about with the upcoming sacrifice; we don't need a werewolf running around out of control on top of everything else."

Peter opened his mouth to snap back a scathing retort that his control was perfectly fine, thank you, but once again Riley beat him to it.

"You don't need to worry about Peter," she told Gustav, the faintest hint of steel in her tone. "I'm going to keep an eye on him, at least as much as I can with my other responsibilities. And I'll take full responsibility for him if something does go wrong."

Peter and Gustav both gave her matching looks of disbelief.

"You seem to have finally lost you mind," Gustav declared after a moment of tense silence. He reached for his ladle and began spooning some stew into a bowl, shooting quelling looks at the other people waiting in the line who were starting to grumble at their extended wait. "I mean, I knew it was bound to happen eventually, with all the stress you're under, but still..."

"Oh, shut up," Riley said without heat as she took the now-full bowl from him and passed it to Peter. "You know why I'm doing it."

"I do know," Gustav acknowledged, filling up another bowl of stew even as he slanted Peter another unreadable look. "You might want to clue in your wolf, though, since I don't think _he_ knows."

"Of course he doesn't know," Riley returned, accepting the second bowl for herself. "He doesn't remember me. And even if he did, I doubt it would make much of a difference; he still wouldn't get it."

" _He_ ," Peter interjected through gritted teeth, "is tired of being talked about as if he wasn't present."

Gustav snorted, flipped him off with his free hand, and then turned back to the cauldron of stew in a clear dismissal.

Peter felt a growl building in s throat, but the next thing he knew, Riley was latching onto his elbow and dragging him away.

"Good talk, Gus," she chirped over her shoulder. "See you tomorrow!"

Peter swallowed his growl, reminding himself that the aggravating hunter was one of Riley's (apparently very few) allies in this place. She'd saved life; the least he could do was not drive away her friends, no matter how much he disliked them.

So he kept quiet, and let Riley tow him along, wanting to do what he could to help her, even if he didn't understand _why_ he wanted to in the first place.

* * *

 _A/N: Well, that was Chapter 6, my friends! I hope you enjoyed it. I know I certainly enjoyed writing it. ;D Anyway, drop me a review if you've got a second to spare; I adore feedback. :)_

 _The next chapter should be posted within a week, depending on my work schedule...and also depending on how much time I spend playing on the Playstation 3 I just got. ;D See you soon!_


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Okay, so, I'm really sorry for the long gap between updates! Life happened, as it tends to do, and I haven't had time to come back and work on Echoes of Remembrance in a little while. But! I've finally finished Inevitable, my hundred chapter Originals longfic, and I ended up dropping my business class, so I (theoretically) have more time for writing now. :)_

 _In other news, this chapter is more or less an emotional rollercoaster? Enjoy!_

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

* * *

Peter was quiet as he ate his bowl of stew. Riley found it incredibly suspicious.

She let the silence go on as they ate, even though it made her so uncomfortable that she almost started fidgeting where she sat. She focused her attention on finishing up her own bowl of stew (the moss hare meat was perfectly tender; she'd have to remember to thank Gustav later), darting a look at Peter sitting across from her whenever she was sure he wasn't looking.

She wasn't quite sure what to do with a quiet Peter. Sure, they'd had their fair share of comfortable silences between them in the past, but never quite like this. She had no idea what to do.

Finally, Peter seemed to notice her not-so-subtle glances at him. "Why do you keep looking at me like that?" he asked, exasperation clear in his tone.

She fumbled her grip on her spoon, cursing under her breath as it clattered into her bowl. "Looking at you like what?" she replied, feigning innocence as she plucked her spoon out of her stew and patted it dry with the edge of her sleeve.

Peter, unsurprisingly, didn't buy her act for even a second. "Like you're waiting for something. Or for me to do something," he added, narrowing his eyes at her. "So tell me: what are you waiting for?"

"Nothing," she said, perhaps a little too quickly to be believable.

Peter just arched an eyebrow.

"If you must know," she snapped, abruptly irritated with him and not sure why, "I'm not used to you being so quiet and thoughtful; I'm worried that you're plotting something."

Peter blinked at her in surprise, then burst out laughing.

"What is so funny?" she hissed at him, hunching up her shoulders as his laughter drew the stares of the other Lost Ones in the dining hall.

"You," Peter answered, still chucking. Then, before she could feel overly insulted by that response, he went on. "This place. _All_ of this," he said, vaguely waving is spoon around to indicate the situation as a whole. "I find it funny," he continued, expression turning more serious, "that _I'm_ making _you_ uncomfortable."

Riley glared at him. "Why is that-"

"Think about it," Peter interjected. "Ever since we met, you've been ten steps ahead of me. And you'd better take that as a compliment, by the way, because that sort of thing doesn't happen to me. You know me," he went on before she could interrupt him. "And not just me, but m family, too; I've seen your sketches. And it's the little things, too; you know my exact age, and I somehow remember your tattoo. I could go on; I've been keeping track. So I just find it _funny_ ," he concluded, "that _I'm_ making _you_ uncomfortable by simply _not talking._ "

Riley opened her mouth, closed it, then slurped up a spoonful of stew instead of speaking because she just couldn't find the words. She should have known, should have realized...Peter, with his hungering need to know and understand...she should have realized that her attitude and behavior would be driving him around the bend with curiosity and frustration.

"I'm sorry," she said at last, pushing aside her now-empty bowl. "I was so caught up in you being here that I didn't stop to think about what you must be feeling."

"I'm not feeling anything," was Peter's immediate answer. "Which is strange," he went on carefully, obviously noticing the slight wince she'd given at his words, "because I feel like I _should be_ feeling something. I assume it's something to do with the gaps in my memory."

"It's really nothing you need to worry about," she told him, trying to stifle the grief and hurt that was burning in her chest. "You've already forgotten all of it; the memories are gone."

"But maybe not gone forever," Peter said, and suddenly he looked _excited_ , like when a new idea popped into his head and he was eager to investigate it.

Riley just looked at him, tracing the lines of his face with her eyes, making mental notes on the angle of his jaw and the shape of his lips...for sketching purposes only, of course. "What do you mean?" she asked him, frowning as she ran his words over in her head again.

Peter glanced around at the other Lost Ones in the dining hall, some of whom were still watching both Riley and Peter as they talked. "Not here," he said, shoving aside his bowl and standing up. "Let's go back to your room; we can talk there."

Riley rolled her eyes at his dramatic actions, but complied, rising to her feet and leading him out of the mess hall and back to her room. "What," she demanded once she'd slammed her door shut behind them and swiped a hand across the security and privacy wards she'd etched into the doorframe, "is so damn important that you couldn't say it back there in the mess hall?"

Peter swallowed hard, but said nothing, his eyes somehow solemn and excited all at once, and just a little bit terrified as well...which scared _Riley_ , because what in the world could possibly put _that_ look in _this_ Peter's eyes? This Peter, who was ten years older than the one she'd known and who had almost certainly seen some pretty nasty shit since she'd been taken away and erased his life. This Peter, who carried himself like someone who'd been destroyed and abandoned, and had clawed their way back into a life that they no longer trusted to be fair or safe. The Peter she'd known before hadn't been naive, not by any stretch of the imagination, but _this_ Peter? It was like he'd both gained and lost something over the years; he was...sharper, with more edges to him than she was used to.

Of course, she supposed that was only to be expected, considering the fact that ten years _had_ passed; she wasn't who she'd been back then, either (she'd be curious to know what Peter thought of who she'd become...if only he could _remember_ her).

She blinked suddenly as Peter waved a hand in front of her face. "I, uh...what?"

Peter tilted his head an regarded her curiously. "Where did you go just now?" he asked. "One second you were glaring at me and demanding answers, the next it was like you drifted away. Mentally, I mean."

"Ah." Riley felt her cheeks heat up as she blushed in embarassment. "I...I do that sometimes, sorry." It was a holdover from her younger days, from her stay in Eichen House; she much better at staying focused now, especially without her psychometry cluttering up her thoughts with akk sorts o fpsychic impressions (she still hadn't worked out why gone almost entirely silent since coming here, but she supposed that in the grand schee of things it didn't matter much at the moment), but her mind still had a tendency to wander at various times.

A few people (her sister and Peter himself included) had theorized that it was her mind;s way of protecting itself; that her thougths had a tendency to drift because that had been her way of mentally escaping her treatment during her stay at Eichen House. She didn't know if there was any truth to that theory, didn't know if she cared or not if it was; she just-

And I'm doing it again, she thought irritably, shaking her head as she caught Peter looking at her with a bemused expression.

"Sorry," she said again with a sigh. "Like I said, it happens. I just...get lost in my head sometimes." She bit down hard on her lower lip, the pain of it focusing her thoughts, grounding her in the here and now. "You were about to tell me something, right? Something that you didn't want ot say with everyone else listening in?"

Peter hesistated, then nodded, and like with the fear she'd seen in his eyes before, the hesitation made her uncomfortable; Peter wasn't one to be so uncertain, not ten years ago and not now, she was sure of it.

"Spit it out," she snapped, her temper flaring as her herves got the better of her. "Now."

"...Never mind," Peter said, taking an abrupt step away from her. "I just..." He shook his head. "Never mind."

Riley frowned at him. "Seriously?" she asked, exasperated. "All that build-up, dragging me out of the mess hall...and that's all you've got for me? 'Never mind'?"

He shrugged, an unreadable look crossing his face before he gave her an insolent smirk. "What can I say, I'm an asshole like that sometimes. Most times, actually. I'd apologize for it," he said in an iverly cheerful tone, "but I'm not actually sorry, so..."

Riley wondered if she could take a swing at him and actually make the punch _hurt_ before his werewolf healing kicked in. "Argh, I can't believe you!" She spun around, snatched up the closest book (it just so happened to be some sort of thick volume of ancient poetry), and hurled it as his head. "I thought you had something _important_ to say, dammit!" She glared at him (he'd dodged the book easily, the jerk), magic thrumming through her body in angry, crackling waves, like someone had hooked her up to a live wire. "This isn't some fucking _game_ , you know! This is life and death, the struggle we've got on our hands here! Or was that not clear enough when that hound laid open my shoulder because I was _saving your life_?" Electricity sparked at her fingertips and she had to clench her hands into fists to keep from lashing out with her magic.

Something akin to remorse flashed through Peter's gaze as he looked at her, but it was just as quickly as it had come, and then he was standing there just the same as before, all arrogance and insolence. "One thing I _can_ tell you," he said to her, "is that your hunter friend used too much pepper in the stew. Have him dial it back a little next time, okay?"

* * *

Peter was impressed with Riley's control; had their positions been reversed, he wasn't sure he'd be able to refrain from lashing out and attacking.

He wasn't sure what had made him change his mind about telling Riley of the two strange visions he'd had since coming here and meeting her. Perhaps it was that he wasn't sure himself if the things he'd seen were real or not; hell, he wasn't even sure if he _wanted_ them to be true or not.

So he held his tongue, deflecting at the last moment in a way that was, he was willing to admit (to himself if no one else), a dick move.

Looking at Riley now, with the way little sparks of lightning were crackling across her clecnhed fists and the way her gray eyes were dark and foreboding like and oncoming thunderstorm with just the faintest ring of silver on the outside of her irises...yeah, he was incredibly lucky that she wasn't lashing out at him in frustration over his obvious non-answer.

He was about to say something relatively decent in an attempt to soothe her (justified) ire, but before he had a chance to formulate the right words, Riley was storming across her room to yet another pile of books and muttering under her breath about men being obnoxious pigs and Peter being the Pig King (he couldn't decide if he found her insults annoying or amusing).

"What are you doing?" he asked after a moment, curiosity getting he better of him as Riley snatched up two small journals bound in green leather and stalked over to the massive chalk drawing on the wall (it had takens ome squinting and creative thinking, but he'd finally ralized, after seeing some of the notations scribled on the wall, that it was a map of the town).

"Updating my intel," was Riley's cryptic answer as she plucked a small chunk of red chalk out of a battered tin can and marked something down on the massive map.

Peter scowled at her deliberate evasion of answering (and yes, he knew very well how hypocritical he was being, thank you), and strode over to get a better look at all the little smudges and notes. "I assume the color-coding serves some purpose?" he said, glancing at the various marks and scribbles that were littered across the representation of the town.

"No," Riley drawled sarcastically, "I'm doing it strictly for personal amusement." She glanced over at him with a fiant smirk on her face before continuing on in a more serious tone. "Red is to mark locations where I've had an encounter with something hostile. Yellow is to mark caution zones," she went on, gesturing to a few spots on the map where the streets were shaded in with yellow chalk. "Places where enemies have been sighted but not fought account for most of the yellow patches," she added, "but a couple of them are spots where a peculiar magical anomaly popped up without explanation."

"What about green?" Peter asked curiously, filing away his questions about anomalies for a later date as he went to stand at Riley's side so that he could get a closer look at the the map.

"Safe places," Riley replied, giving a slight sigh as they both looked at how few green spots there were on the map. "Besides this bunker, there's a schoolhouse on the eastern edge of townm" she told him, pointing to the right side of the circle, "and an old library way up north." She pointed to the top portion of the circle.

"And this is us?" Peter guessed gesturing to a larger green asterisk in the southern portion of the map, seemingly equidistant between the southern edge of the circle and the circle's center. Then he frowned peering at the center portion of the map, which was shaded entirely in yellow. "What's all this for?" he asked Riley, indicating the big yellow section.

Riley's face went completely blank and emotionless, the change so sudden that Peter actually took half a step away on sheer instinct. "Do you see the black crosses?" she asked, her voice eerily calm even as her eyes seemed to almost glow with power.

Peter gave her a wary look before stepping back up to the map, eyes picking out the spots marked with crosses. "...places where people died?" he asked in a low voice, notcing a pattern of crosses both on the edges of town and near the red spots that indicated hostile enemies.

Riley just gave a short nod, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. "This one," she said, reaching out a hand to brush her fingertips across one black cross at the very center of the map, "is for my sister. She was taken to the center of the circle, like all sacrifices are. I normally don't even bother marking down those deaths on the map, since we all know what happens once someone is brought there, but..."

"Maybe they're not dead?" Peter offered, shifting uncomfortably at the heavy tang of grief that was coming off of Riley in waves. "I mean, if they're just getting taken away again, maybe it's possible that-"

"No," Riley said sharply, her scent spiking with guilt and anger. "No, she's dead. I'm certain of it. I was there," she added softly, her voice now barely a whisper. "A lot of it's still fucked up in my head, but Rhoswen... _that_ I remember well enough."

Peter found himself wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close without any concious decision on his part to do so; his body just seemed to move on its own, as if attempting to comfort Riley was instinctive. "I'm sorry," he said, swallowing hard. "I know how hard it is to have someone taken from you and not be able tp do anything to stop it."

Riley was almost painfully quiet for a long moment, the only sounds in the room their heartbeats and uneven breathing. Finally, she spoke again. "What happened?" she asked, her voice rough. "To the others," she clarified as he slanted her a confused look. "Talia, and Aaron, and...everyone. I saw your face when you saw my sketches," she told him. "You looked like someone had just ripped your heart out of your chest and stomped it into the dirt." She pressed a hand against her own chest as if that same pain was echoing within her. "I don't...I know you don't remmeber me and don't trust me...but I cared about them, too, Peter." She looked up at him with shimmering eyes. "Please, I need to know: what happened?"

Peter felt his claws coming out as memories of the fire surged and set his blood boiling and he immediately jerked away from Riley to keep from hurting her by accident.

Riley, however, seemed to take it as a verbal door being slammed in her face, and her expression morphed into one of hurt before shifting back into that uncanny blankess that had so unnarved gim before. "I see," she said, her voice carefully devoid of feeling. "You don't trust me even that much. Fine." She spun on her heel and started walking away, towards the door.

"Wait," Peter said, lunging forward to grab her by the elbow, his heart poudning in his chest as he struggled to get his emotions under control; it was harder than it should have been, but what else could be expected, really, when he was trying to shove down memories of his beloved family burning to death before his very eyes as he tried and failed to save them? "I'm not...That isn't..." He growled at himself, frustrated at the way the words just weren't coming out right. He needed to tell her, had been able to tell from the level of detail and care in her sketches that she'd loved his family, too, but he didn't want to just dump it on her. But he couldn't think of what to say; the words just wouldn't come. "They're dead," he blurted out at last, and cringed as Riley went ghost-pale and stopped moving lke she'd been turned to stone.

The redhead opened her mouth to say something, eyes wide and shocked, but all that came out was a slight croak. She tried again a second later, but still no sound came out. Then she started shaking. It started as a slight tremble, then grew into a full-body shudder within moments, until Peter was worried she might shake herself to pieces, with the way she was breathing hard and fast yet not letting any tears fall.

"How?" she gasped out, biting down on her lower lip so hard that it split spilling blood down her chin.

"Hunters," Peter told her, his claws digging into his palms as he clenched his hands into fists. "They trapped us in the house and set it on fire."

Riley's eyes flared bright silver and the smell of ozone filled the room even as Peter scented her fury and rage, white-hot and ferocious. "Bastards," she hissed. Then her anger vanished abruptly, replaced by alarm and concer. "You said 'us'...you were there? In the house?"

"Yes," Peter said, and was about to elaborate on what had transpired, but before he had a chance to, Riley was crossing over to him and putting both hands flat on his chest, her expression a strange combination of fierce protectiveness and panicked concern. "What are you-"

"Shut up," Riley snapped as she finished patting him down, a singe tear finally escaping and sliding down her cheek. "How are you alive? If the others are..." She couldn't seem to bring herself to say dead, but Pter hardly needed her to fill in the blanks. "How are you...?"

Peter snorted. "Pure dumb luck," he said bitterly. "I didn't perish in the fire," he added, "but I was severely wounded. Spent years in a burn ward, comatose."

Riley swallowed hard, sympathy and grief heavy in her scent, along with guilt, something that confused Peter. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice tight and unhappy. "I don't...I can't even..."

"I killed them," he told her, reaching out a hand to absentmindedly brush another tear off her cheek. "The ones responsible for the fire."

"Good," was Riley's immediate response, darkly satisfied.

"And not everyone was killed," Peter felt compelled to say, not sure why he was offering her the information when he didn't totally trust her. "Derek weren't at home when it happened, and Cora somehow managed to get out as well." He briefly considered mentioning that Laura had made it out as well, but decided against it in the end; Laura was dead now anyway, even if it had been by his hand rather than Kate Argent's. And dead was dead, so why bother going into detail?

...He somehow still couldn't shake the guilt over the omission though, especially when Riley looked so relieved to hear that he wasn't the sole Hale survivor.

"Derek and Cora," she breathed, closing her eyes as if trying to picture them in her mind. "Derek's, what, in his twenties now? He must be so handsome. And Cora...does she look like Talia?"

"She does," Peter said, then lightened his tone. "They both grew up in true Hale fashion: too good-looking for their own good."

Riley smacked him on the arm in a way that felt familiar. "Ego check," she grumbled at him, then finally seemed to notice how close she was to him and stepped away, cheeks flushing pink. "I, uh..." She cleared her throat and swiped almost angrily at her eyes. "I'm sorry for shouting at you earlier," she told him. "I'm not sorry for being upset with you," she added quickly, "because you are an arrogant jackass. But I _am_ sorry for the way I reacted. I know you don't know me, and as much as that frustrates me, I need to remember that we're strangers now, and that trust is a thing that takes time to build. Neither of us," she noted with a wry smile, "are particularly patient people. But we need to at least try and get along, okay? Even if trust never comes into play...for the sake of survival, we need to not be constantly at each other's throats."

"Not constantly," Peter agreed with a smirk. "Maybe only seventy-five percent of the time?"

Riley snorted. "That'll do," she acknowledged with a faint grin. "That'll do."

* * *

 _A/N: Well, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Once again, I apologize for the delay in updating; this story is on a bi-monthly/ever-other-week update schedule, but I was so busy for the last couple months that I didn't have adequate time to really sit down and work on EoR. I did, however, manage to self-publish my novel Wind and Flames! Unlike my Tales of Camellia series of short stories, W &F doesn't involve werewolves, but instead is an urban fantasy tale involving Norse mythology. If you're interested in checking it out, it's for sale on amazon; the full title is Wind and Fames: Wyrd Chronicles Book One. :)_

 _Anyway, the next update for this story, EoR, will be in two weeks, with a slight possibility for an update sooner, depending on my work schedule; I'm still working full-time at my day job, plus hopefully some freelance writing work on the side if Upwork works out as I'm hoping, so I'm not sure yet how much free time I'll have for writing fanfiction in the upcoming weeks...but I really love working on this story, so I'm sure I'll find the time. ;D_

 _As always, any comments or questions can be directed to my tumblr, yuzukimist, or you could just PM me here on ffnt if you're so inclined. XD_

 _See you guys next time!_


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